Reflection

Naliboki Trip

Wednesday:

A hare ran in front of our van that brought great luck to us.

We were greeted with very good food and hospitality.

Thursday:

Left the station at 5am and got into the car. In the car I saw animals in the field. Those were Roe deer jumping as if on steroids, whoper-swans walking leisurely and cranes resting by small rivers.  We then stopped and walked around to hear capercaillie. I enjoyed the sounds of nature and the peacefulness of the forest on the first day. I saw capercaille while driving the car. In the evening my team sat next to a river where beavers and otters swum and we hoped to see it. We didn't see any but we went for a walk nearby and found a deer skull that I took home. Yum!

Friday:

Very nice breakfast. We got up very early and we got to see bison which surprised me. It was big, hairy beast. I was truly happy to witness the infamous Belorussian Bison. Vadmin got sad that people were falling asleep in the cars. We then went and saw storks on top on trees and I was surprised to see so many nests on top of tall trees. We ate outside and I loved listening to Vadims stories. We then went to a swamp and I fell into it. The swamp was the old growth and it smelled like garlic, or at least thats what I heard since my nose was blocked. I found moss and took some with me because Ms. Kurten asked me to but she also wanted some liverwort. I tried explaining what liverwort was to Irina but it was long because I couldn't just google it. She then had a dictionary of all plants and found one species of liverwort.

Saturday:

We saw a brownish wolf! That was so nice. Never have I seen a wolf before in the wild. I got to see how Vadim places and takes off camera traps and it was so cool seeing the different wolf homes and dens even though there were no wolves.

Sunday:

We went through a beautiful terrain full of swamps. We saw the cool sunshine, packed and left after a delightful lunch. Vadim talked about interesting history that I kind of missed because of my stomach ache ;( and then me and Irina went liverwort hunting and were unsuccessful.

How did the observation impact what I knew?

I was surprised to see so many animals. Even Mr. Smalley who went to the forest 8 times told us that we were lucky. I understood how much work Vadim does by walking around and taking camera traps. I was astonished by how he remembers the whole forest and can navigate without a map. The one sad thing that I didn't do was that I didn't find the Liverwort( that no one believed existed). I understood how hard it is to find animals as it was my first time trying to track animals down instead of looking in a zoo. The amount of silence and tenacity people need to have to see the animals is extraordinary. 

Plan to solve an issue in the forest:

We must stop human interference besides Vadim and other experts in the forest. Poachers or people who have no clue what they are doing are destroying the animal habitat, scaring the animals and ye poachers murder animals. We must limit the amount of humans that stop the flow of nature. How will we do this? Set up billboards that say you can't be here or charge a fine for being in the forest for an undeclared reason. Get security cameras and instill rewards for catching poachers. We must teach people to erase their footprints when going after an animal for good reasons because poachers might follow.