Warsaw---European Union citizens no longer need visas to access the Belarussian part of Europe's last primeval forest, the director of the Polish side of the Bialowieza woodland and bison hideout said Friday.
"The first group of tourists crossed the border today to continue on to the Belarussian side," Miroslaw Stepaniuk, director of EU member Poland's Bialowieza national park, told AFP.
Sprawling across 150,000 hectares (370,000 acres), the Bialowieza Forest spans the Polish-Belarussian border and is the final remnant of a massive woodland that spread across Europe after the last Ice Age, which ended about 10,000 years ago.
The decision by the government of Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko only applies to the forest. EU citizens still need a visa to access the rest of Belarus.
But anyone wishing to visit the ancient forest only has to request an entry permit at the Belarusian park's site -- http://npbp.brest.by -- in order to cross into Belarus from Poland at the Bialowieza-Pererov border post.
"You can only visit on foot or by bicycle, and stay no more than three days on the Belarusian side," Stepaniuk added.
Named a World Heritage site in 1979, the forest is home to 20,000 animal species, including 250 types of birds and 62 different mammals -- among them Europe's largest, the bison.
Europe's tallest trees, firs towering 50 metres high (164 feet), and oaks and ashes of 40 metres, also flourish here, in an ecosystem untouched by human hands for more than 10 millennia.
Some 150,000 tourists visit the Polish side of the forest each year, of which 10 percent are from abroad.
AFP
