Outbreaks of Bark Beetle and Nationalism at the Forested Polish/Belarusian Border: Resurgent Syndromes and Ecological Gaps

An unsuspecting insect, ips typographus, has played a key role in the way people experience temporality at the forested Polish/Belarusian border. In the ancient Białowieża Forest, the spruce bark beetle is both a superhero “rewilder” that can allow the forest to continue deep time evolution and an “insect enemy” that will unleash dystopian futures if left unchecked. The communist past and Polish nationalism share a recursive tension that plays out as a performance with the bark beetle, one that sets the stage for the current humanitarian crisis of asylum seekers enduring a gauntlet of pushbacks between Polish and Belarus in the forest. My analysis hones in on anti-communist partisan ecology, a phenomena of WWII anti-communist memory being tied to forest management, to open an ecological gap in the expected trajectory of historical occurrences. I explore the complex ecologies of a drying forest, in what some want to call a dying forest.’ By using the narrative and agency of the bark beetle I show how radical difference can be something that is more than toxic for the future of this forest.

Eunice Blavascunas is an environmental anthropologist and Associate Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies at Whitman College. She is the author of Foresters, Borders and Bark Beetles: The Future of Europe’s Last Primeval Forest (Indiana University Press 2020). Her work looks at how memory politics enter into ecological debates with a focus on temporality, postsocialism, and nationalism.