Assessment of the impact of the project on the local community in the Solska Forest - stage I

The Solska Forest is the largest forest complex in the Lublin region, stretching from the Poland-Ukraine border, to the south of Roztocze, up to the Janów Forests. Due to the exceptional wealth of fauna in this region, the "Solska Forest" Nature 2000 area was created. The majority of the refuge is covered with forests, mainly pine forests.

It was there, among other places, where the implementation of the project "Protection of rare zonal bird species on selected areas of the Natura 2000 in Lublin region" started more than a year ago.

To a certain extent, the project activities also involved the residents of the selected villages in the immediate vicinity of the areas of Natura 2000. The first of the scheduled tasks, in which the residents could participate, was the preparation and distribution of surveys to help to assess the current state of knowledge of representatives of the local community, in terms of natural values of the areas inhabited by them, and the role that they play in the conservation of biological diversity. Surveys have been conducted on randomly selected inhabitants of the local gminas: Łukowa, Księżpol, Aleksandrów and Biłgoraj. We are very grateful that thanks to the effective cooperation with the local community it was possible to carry out more than 160 surveys. Everyone who filled in the survey received in gratitude a promotional calendar for our project with beautiful photographs of zonal birds. We would also like to particularly thank the leaders of the above mentioned gminas, their employees and leaders of the particular villages for the favourable approach to our activities and help in contacting the farmers, transmitting all the information as well as encouraging everyone to participate in our project.

The first report from the assessment of the impact of the project on the local community will be prepared soon. Meanwhile, we attach a questionnaire, which was filled in by the inhabitants of areas surrounding the Solska Forest.

The next action that we invite you to join is a workshop which will be held in the first half of this year. Its aim will be to broaden the knowledge of farmers, hunters and children concerning nature conservation, in particular the recognition of zonal birds, their nests, behaviour and conservation.

We are taking the above-mentioned actions in the deep belief that people, through the active participation in the project, will gain a full awareness not only of the fact that the protection of zonal birds is such an important aspect of the protection of the resources of nature in Poland, but will also find out how many various benefits the local community can gain from the fact of living in the immediate vicinity of the sites of such high nature value.