The Beginning of the Imperial Period (1796–1837)

The fourth chapter addresses the period when Bialowieza Primeval Forest (BPF) was taken into the custodianship of the Russian State. By 1795, after the third partition of Poland, BPF was incorporated into the Russian Empire, to be the property of the Russian state treasury. Following the 1795 partition, the administrative system that had previously protected the Forest partly collapsed. One of the thirteen forest districts of BPF given to a favourite of Russian Empress Catherine II was soon sold and clear-cut. This left a distinctive deforested triangle on the Forest's map. However, in 1802 and 1803 Tsar Alexander I reinstated all the former protection afforded to the European bison and BPF, and since 1820 any timber felling or hunting in the forest was prohibited. In the meantime, the Russian imperial administration sought to improve the forestry management based on “scientific” and “rational” principles, but it encountered several problems in achieving their ambitions.