Understanding and Mitigating the Ecological Footprint of State Border Barriers

The hardening of international borders through fortification and militarization is on the rise around the world. Construction of border infrastructure often proceeds without environmental review or input from ecologists. As a result, natural areas of biological importance are often degraded through a combination of habitat fragmentation, disruption of ecosystem functions, blockage of animal movements, propagation of invasive species, and a suite of other effects. This project focused on the section of the Poland-Belarus border that runs along Białowieża Forest, a Natura 2000 and UNESCO World Heritage site. The project ran for 18 months beginning in August 2023. Our overarching research aim was to improve understanding of the ecological effects of the fortified border on the forest (e.g., heat, light, noise), ramifications for wild animals (e.g., activity, movement including crossing of barriers, human-wildlife interactions) and plants (e.g., alien and invasive species) to help inform further monitoring and potential mitigation. This document constitutes the final report of activities, findings, outputs, and challenges and has been submitted to our funder NAWA (https://nawa.gov.pl/en/nawa), which supported the project through an urgency grant. In addition to the project team members, a number of international and local researchers contributed to this project and/or report and their names are included on the report cover page.  

Suggested citation:  

Nowak, K., Adamowski, W., Bubnicki, J.W., Jaroszewicz, B., Komar, E., Křenova, Z., Kuberski, Ł., Michielsen, R., Nowak, P., Pokorny, B., Richards, S.A., Ruczyński, I., Samojlik, T., Selva, N., Stachowicz, I., Traphagen, M., Zegarek, M., Żmihorski, M., 2025. Understanding and mitigating the ecological footprint of state border barriers. Final project report to NAWA. Available on Zenodo: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15005820