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The Eurasian lynx is a large carnivore widely distributed across Eurasia. However, our understanding of population status is heterogeneous across their range, with some populations isolated that are at risk of reduced genetic variation and a complete lack of information about others. In many European countries, Eurasian lynx are monitored through demographic studies crucial for their conservation and management. Even so, there are only rough and fragmented population assessments from Ukraine and Belarus, despite strict protection in both countries and their importance for lynx connectivity across Europe. We monitored lynx from October 2020 to March 2021 and used camera trapping in combination with spatial capture–recapture (SCR) methods in a Bayesian framework to provide the first SCR density estimation of three lynx populations across Ukraine and Belarus, including the Ukrainian Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, southern Belarus and the Ukrainian Carpathians. Our density estimates varied within our study areas ranging from 0.45 to 1.54 individuals/100 km2. This work provides a substantial scientific component to the overall understanding of lynx conservation for a region where only broad information is available and opens the doors for further large‐scale monitoring and trend assessments. The crucial information we provide can greatly enhance the range‐wide assessments of the status of this protected species. We also discuss the implications for Eurasian lynx conservation, despite the geopolitical realities impacting species monitoring in the region. Our work serves as a baseline, not only for future conservation interventions but also to evaluate the effects of disturbance and threats to these protected populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is a review of Pińskie błota: Natura, wiedza i polityka na polskim Polesiu do 1945 roku [The Pinsk Marshes: Nature, Knowledge, and Politics in Polish Polesia before 1945] by Sławomir Łotysz, Universitas 2022, 565 pp. ISBN 978-83-242-3958-0.

The article is a gloss on a review of the monograph Pińskie błota: Natura, wiedza i polityka na polskim Polesiu do 1945 roku [The Pinsk Marshes: Nature, Knowledge, and Politics in Polish Polesia before 1945] by Sławomir Łotysz, which appears in this issue of Sprawy Narodowościowe: Seria nowa.

Abstract The Eurasian lynx is a large carnivore widely distributed across Eurasia. However, our understanding of population status is heterogeneous across their range, with some populations isolated that are at risk of reduced genetic variation and a complete lack of information about others. In many European countries, Eurasian lynx are monitored through demographic studies crucial for their conservation and management. Even so, there are only rough and fragmented population assessments from Ukraine and Belarus, despite strict protection in both countries and their importance for lynx connectivity across Europe. We monitored lynx from October 2020 to March 2021 and used camera trapping in combination with spatial capture–recapture (SCR) methods in a Bayesian framework to provide the first SCR density estimation of three lynx populations across Ukraine and Belarus, including the Ukrainian Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, southern Belarus and the Ukrainian Carpathians. Our density estimates varied within our study areas ranging from 0.45 to 1.54 individuals/100 km2. This work provides a substantial scientific component to the overall understanding of lynx conservation for a region where only broad information is available and opens the doors for further large‐scale monitoring and trend assessments. The crucial information we provide can greatly enhance the range‐wide assessments of the status of this protected species. We also discuss the implications for Eurasian lynx conservation, despite the geopolitical realities impacting species monitoring in the region. Our work serves as a baseline, not only for future conservation interventions but also to evaluate the effects of disturbance and threats to these protected populations.

The article is a gloss on a review of the monograph Pińskie błota: Natura, wiedza i polityka na polskim Polesiu do 1945 roku [The Pinsk Marshes: Nature, Knowledge, and Politics in Polish Polesia before 1945] by Sławomir Łotysz, which appears in this issue of Sprawy Narodowościowe: Seria nowa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is a review of Pińskie błota: Natura, wiedza i polityka na polskim Polesiu do 1945 roku [The Pinsk Marshes: Nature, Knowledge, and Politics in Polish Polesia before 1945] by Sławomir Łotysz, Universitas 2022, 565 pp. ISBN 978-83-242-3958-0. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay deals with the transformation of local identities between 1965 and 2015 in three regions in rural Ukrainian Polesia where the USSR built nuclear power plants, each with its own satellite city. These included the Chernobyl NPP and the city of Pripyat (1970- 1986) in Kyiiv Polesia, the Rivne NPP and the city of Kuznetsovsk (since 1973)/Varash (since 2016) in West or Great Polesia, and the Khmelnitskiy NPP and the city of Netishyn (since 1980) in so-called Little Polesia. The essay is based on data from field work carried out in these regions from 2016 to 2018, which primarily involved interviewing eyewitnesses and experts and doing research in local museums, archives and libraries within the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and in Kyiv, Varash and Netishyn. The author analyzes the local identities in these three regions during the early stages of nuclear industrialization and their transformation during the nuclear modernization. She also looks at the formation of new urban identities in the monoindustrial cities, which were situated in rural areas, and at the construction of new self-images and images of others among the new urban and old rural local populations. The common history of these three regions came to an end with the Chernobyl catastrophe. The author examines the impact of the catastrophe, the trauma of the following involuntary resettlement and how it affected local identities in Polesia after 1986. The essay also deals with the impact of the Ukrainian post-Chernobyl anti-nuclear movement, the following moratorium on the construction of new nuclear power plants, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the role of Ukrainian independence in the transformation of urban identities in Kuznetsovsk/Varash and Netishyn, where the nuclear power stations are still in operation. Lastly, the author investigates how new identity-forming factors as Ukrainization, decommunization, and social inequality, have played an important role in post-Soviet identity building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For centuries, Southern Belarus was notorious in neighboring regions for its impassable marshland landscapes. In the course of historical and political reforms and reorganization, this outlying borderland experienced lively changes of rulership and government. All attempts made by the Russians, Germans and Poles to make the area easier to access and traverse for the purposes of stimulating the economy, exploiting natural resources or developing tourism ended in only modest success. After the October Revolution, the draining of the swamps was proclaimed by the new Soviet powers to be a top agricultural priority. However, the project could only be partially realized in the early decades of the Soviet Union due to industrialization, which significantly depleted state resources. With Leonid Brezhnev‟s assumption of power in 1964, the increase of land yield in the race against the USA was seen as an indicator of the potency of Soviet state power. For this purpose, vast state resources were made available. A side effect of swampland drainage and the improvement of soil conditions was an initiative to modernize the rural region, so, with the establishment of large state-owned agricultural enterprises came the expansion and development of infrastructure. Roads were laid across the countryside and modern houses, schools and kindergartens were built. Thus, after 45 years of Soviet power, the rural population was also able to enjoy the benefits of modern achievements. Gradually, Polesia started making the headlines. Films were made and countless newspaper articles written. With the expansion of the airport near the transforming city of Pinsk, a direct air connection could be established between the region and the Belarusian capital of Minsk. This made it possible to hold both national and international conferences in Polesia. However, land melioration proved to be an enormous burden on the natural environment. Draining the swampland deprived many animal species of their natural habitats. Many areas that had been drained were also not suitable for melioration. This reduced the economic success of the initiative considerably and saw the focus shift increasingly to the social aspects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Polesia was still Europe's largest swampland area in the first half of the twentieth century. The western part formed the voivodeship of Polesia, which belonged to Poland and was inhabited mainly by Eastern Slavs (in rural areas) and Jews (in the cities and shtetls). Considered a terra non grata until the nineteenth century, political and state actors and others closely associated with the government now began to conceive, prepare and carry out modernization measures in order to develop the region's agricultural constitution, structure and production. Some of their arguments were explicitly ―apolitical.‖ Until 1939, land consolidation measures and, in part, the dissolution of easements were successfully carried out. On the other hand, the planned settlement of ex-military personnel, the partial expropriation and parcelling out of land and the melioration of swamps were only achieved on a relatively small scale. Over one million hectares of wetlands were to be meliorated in a single large-scale project. However, this only succeeded to a limited extent. Such a mammoth interventionist undertaking first faced technical and organizational difficulties; secondly, there was a lack of funds; thirdly, there were a number of interventionist projects in Central Poland and on the Baltic Sea that were considered more important; and fourthly, the local farmerfishermen were not enthused by the prospect of melioration, as the areas of ―improved‖ land were to benefit non-locals and the transition to grain production would reduce wildlife and fishing areas. There was local resistance to wide-spread melioration for rational reasons, however the modernizers saw it merely as the stubborn conservatism of an isolated population of maverick dissenters. The modernization measures were presented as an assimilation program for the consolidation of the Polish nation, which was intended to turn primitive people who lacked national consciousness (tutejsi, poleszucy) into de facto Poles. As a result, Polesia remained a neglected region within Poland. However, as a result of these landscape interventions and demographic developments, the question of ownership and commons structures increasingly came to the fore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues for the integration of environmental perspectives into historical studies of territorialization. Using the case of the Western Expedition for the Drainage of Marshlands in Polesia (1873-1902), it shows that the transformation of the environment was one of many means by which the government of the Russian Empire sought to integrate the imperial territory and to develop regions that were considered backward. Three factors shaped these territorialization efforts in Polesia: firstly, the desire to foster economic development in rural areas; secondly, the role of the state as landowner; and, thirdly, a widespread consensus regarding the economic uselessness of wetlands. The canal network built by the Western Expedition improved conditions for commercial forestry in Polesia and connected the region to important transport routes. Yet, canal construction and river straightening measures were contested, as they subordinated existing land and water use practices to the interests of the central government. The example of the Western Expedition demonstrates that the concept of the "ecosystem engineer" can help to analytically grasp the ecological dimension of imperial rule. At the same time, the case is symptomatic of a new paradigm in the relationship between state and nature in modern Russia: Environmental change was not a side effect of the state‟s territorialization efforts, but an actively applied means of spatial consolidation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local ecological practice (LEP, e.g., the everyday practice of collecting and using plants, including wild food plants) is shaped by nature (available local resources) and culture (local perceptions and knowledge on their usability), including a multitude of factors, among which language and geographical or cultural separation have been found to play crucial roles in affecting biocultural diversity. Also, proximity to the forest has been shown to increase the use of plants. We conducted ethnobotanical fieldwork within eastern and western regions of Ukrainian Polesia, during which we interviewed 118 people. Through semi-structured interviews, we recorded the distribution of the current uses of 70 wild food taxa. The analysis of use records revealed homogeneous distribution of use despite the geographical distance and different spoken dialects; however, we were able to single out the highly sylvan region of eastern Polesia as the area with highest biocultural diversity for the use of wild food plants. The results suggest that in the context of the overall homogenization of local ecological knowledge, the continued existence of unintended contact with nature through living and working in the forest may be the primary factor maintaining the broader LEP in the sylvan area of eastern Polesia.Місцева екологічна практика (MЕП, що включає повсякденну практику збору та використання дикорослих рослин у їжу) формується природою (місцевими ресурсами) та культурою (місцеві знання про їх використання), що включає безліч чинників, серед яких мова та географічне або культурне відокремлення відіграють вирішальну роль у впливі на біокультурне різноманіття. Також показано, що близькість до лісу збільшує використання рослин. Ми проводили етноботанічні польові роботи у двох областях Українського Полісся, в ході яких ми провели інтерв’ю з 118 людьми. За допомогою напівструктурованих інтерв’ю ми задокументували поточне використання 70 таксонів дикорослих рослин у їжу. Аналіз записів про вживання свідчить про однорідний розподіл використання, незважаючи на географічне розташування та різні розмовні діалекти; однак, ми змогли виділити лісистий регіон Східного Полісся як територію з найвищим біокультурним різноманіттям використання дикорослих рослин уїжу. Результати свідчать, що в контексті загальної гомогенізації місцевих екологічних знань, продовження існування контакту з природою живучи та працюючи в лісі може бути основним чинником, який підтримує ширшу MЕПу в лісовій зоні Східного Полісся. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engelking examines the representations of the Poleshuks (the people of Polesia) in mainstream Polish culture. Based on selected examples of popular writing from the interwar period, Engelkind portrays Russian peasants - the ancestors of today's Ukrainians and Belorussians - as an emblematic figure of Polish discourses of the Borderlands. The stereotypical notion of the Poleshuk is based on concepts drawn from race theory, nationalist and colonial discourses as well as modernizing ambitions, and it is an internalized and at the same time excluded Other. Like the Jew, the Poleshuk functions as a constitutive foreign ethno-nationalist model of Polishness. The Poleshuk is excluded from Polishness in two ways: as a peasant (a savage with no culture) and as a Russian (Orthodox, Bolshevik). It is the narcissistic self-image of the Pole as the higher ranking ‘lord' (pan) that requires this image of an untamed and untameable ‘Poleshuk' as its obverse constructed on national and class-based difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tracing the Belorussian Poleszuks (a report on field research) The present article is a report on field research conducted in summer 2010 in order to collect dialectological material. 13 localities were researched altogether: Pinsk and 11 villages of the Pinsk district and one village of the Stolin district. During the interviews the following topics were discussed: the language situation in the village, issues of national identity, visions of Polesia and Poleszuks, traditions and customs, issues of confession, attitude towards the process of draining bogs or image of Poland and Poles. Belorussian linguists (e.g. A. Krywicki) take note of the fact that Polesia, despite frequent dialectological research, has not been described accurately enough by linguists. The rich material collected showed not only well-preserved dialects of Polesia of Ukrainian basis (slight influence mainly of the Russian language can be observed with people of the oldest generation) but also strong though disappearing spiritual and material culture of the inhabitants of Polesia. По следам белорусских полешуков (отчёт по итогам полевых исследований) Настоящая статья является рапортом полевых исследований, проведённых летом 2010 г. с целью сбора диалектологического материала. Исследование охватило 13 населённых пунктов – город Пинск, 11 деревень Пинского района и одну деревню Столинского района Брестской области Беларуси. В интервью затрагивались следующие темы: языковая ситуация в деревне, вопросы национального самосознания, образы Полесья и полешуков, традиции и обычаи, вопросы вероисповедания, отношение к процессу мелиорации, а также образ Польши и поляков. Белорусские филологи (напр. А. Кривицкий) обращают внимание на то, что несмотря на многочисленные диалектологические исследования, Полесье остаётся территорией, которая всё ещё недостаточно подробно описана языковедами. Собранный обширный материал показал не только хорошо сохранившиеся полесские диалекты с украинской основой (среди респондентов старшего поколения видны незначительные влияния в основном русского языка), но и до сих пор сильную, хотя и угасающую духовную и материальную культуру полешуков.

The western part of Polesia (Polish: Polesie) was made part of Poland resulting from the Treaty of Riga, 1921. Characteristic to the area were specific economic and ethnic traits. Civilisational retardation and, in a number of cases, underdeveloped ethnic/national awareness of the locals caused Polish authorities to formulate projects with respect to this region aimed at gradual Polonisation of its populace. The process was regarded as an element of civilisation-instilling mission, as well as a precondition for achievement of the desired goals related to internal and external safety. These projects, and the results of Polonisation process, are analysed herein. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]