As soon as the sun dries out the remnants of winter, meadows and roadside ditches around Bolesławiec go up in flames—as do the stubble fields of the lazier farmers, owners of agricultural land, if they did not burn the “remnants” in their fields in late autumn. This is how farmers and property owners remove in spring the dried stems and leaves left to their fate before winter. We observed the latest such case during several sunny days before Easter, in front of the municipal cemetery on Śluzowa Street. So what if the charred shrubs were acacias, beautifully fragrant in spring and at the beginning of summer? Who cares, including the municipal authorities? Fire is also treated as the “cheapest herbicide” for removing weeds.
Environmentalists warn that when meadows, wasteland or peatlands are burned, not only weeds and dry blades of grass are destroyed; plant roots, herbs, bacterial flora, ants, ladybirds and birds nesting there also die. In autumn, meadow vegetation stores reserve nutrients in the lower parts of stems located just above or below the soil surface. These nutrients are essential for the growth and development of plants in spring. In autumn, some plant species form buds and produce shoots that determine the following year’s yields. Plant tissues die at temperatures as low as +50°C. When grass is burned, however, the temperature reaches several hundred degrees Celsius. This has an adverse effect on yields.
Meadows, riverbanks, areas of shrubbery and tree belts in fields are habitats for many species of insects, birds and animals. Burning kills ants, whose single colony can destroy up to 4 million pests—harmful insects—per year (a suggestion for allotment gardeners: bear this fact in mind during the widespread attempts to eliminate underground anthills!). Ladybirds that eat aphids, bumblebees that pollinate clover and alfalfa, hedgehogs, moles, young hares, nestlings and frogs also die in the flames. All these animals are simply needed.
The smoke produced while vegetation is burned prevents bees from foraging, which significantly reduces the number of pollinated flowers and consequently lowers plant yields. Large quantities of carbon dioxide, sulfur and aromatic hydrocarbons with carcinogenic properties enter the atmosphere. Burned humus causes cracks and fissures to form in the soil, leading to the erosion of deeper layers. A burned meadow is more exposed to wind erosion and, on hill slopes, also to water erosion. Careless meadow burning causes fires in forests, peatlands and sometimes even farm buildings. In 1993, 9,140 grass and stubble-field fires and nearly 5,000 fires on unforested land occurred in the country (information from the National Headquarters of the State Fire Service). This accounted for 19 percent of all fires in Poland.
The ban on burning vegetation in meadows, pastures, wasteland, ditches, roadside strips, railway routes, peatlands and reed zones was introduced by the Nature Conservation Act of October 16, 1991. Burning vegetation is punishable by a fine or arrest. The provisions of the Environmental Protection and Management Act provide for a prison sentence of up to three years for causing unintentional pollution of water, air or land while endangering human life or health. It is worth remembering this. I also address this reminder to the farmers from Jaroszewice who burn grass on agricultural wasteland bordering the “Serbinowa” allotment gardens in the large gardening and allotment complex south of Śluzowa Street.
By the way, a personal reflection. In my native region—on the outskirts of the Białowieża Forest—no one burned grass or stubble. Perhaps that is why, as early as February, local people gathered the first mushrooms—morels and false morels edible— in hollows in the forest, while in March the mezereon blossomed and filled the air with fragrance, followed somewhat later by violet-blue liverworts and pasqueflowers and white anemones. Patches of snow still lay on the ground, yet the forest was already teeming with plant and animal life. Here, cemetery-like silence reigns until late spring. Through our own fault and choice.