Case study:Shaping and protecting water-mud biotopes in Garwolin Forest division through development of small retention

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Project overview

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Status	Complete
Project web site
Themes	Environmental flows and water resources, Habitat and biodiversity
Country	Poland
Main contact forename	Ignacy, Tomasz, Tomasz, Waldemar
Main contact surname	Kardel, Okruszko, Stańczyk, Mioduszewski
Main contact user ID
Contact organisation	GWP Eastern Europe
Contact organisation web site	http://www.gwp.org/en/GWP-CEE/
Partner organisations
Parent multi-site project
This is a parent project encompassing the following projects	No

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Project summary

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When the project in the Garwolin forest was designed, it was based upon the assumption that the design of the previous water management programmes had been flawed, having negative effects on the forest. Bearing this in mind, the aims of the new project were to improve water conditions by decreasing water outflow from the forest area, and restoring the mid-forest water reservoirs and wetlands.

An important factor was to inhibit water outflow from the forest, collect and store water in reservoirs and in soils, to minimise negative impacts of potential water deficit during the summer.

The basic objective of the project was to improve the water balance by constructing small retention reservoirs that could collect snowmelt, and which also limit the fast runoff of rainwater. These measures will allow restoration and maintenance of the protected biotopes of flora and fauna connected with the water – mud environment. An additional aim of the project was to construct watering holes for forest animals. These watering holes could also be used for water collection by fire fighters in case of there would be a fire in the forest.

Monitoring surveys and results

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It is hard to evaluate how the implemented investments contributed to flood protection. However, it is beyond doubt that the investments increased the groundwater level, and increased the soil humidity. Today, less water flows out from the forest areas. The implemented measures thus caused significant ecological effects, especially:

• restoration and maintenance of flora biotopes and animals connected with aquatic and wetlands environments;

• appearance of endangered fauna species;

• diversification of the migration trails of migrating birds in the vicinity of the Vistula valley;

• the damming devices fulfil various ecological functions such as functioning as watering holes for animals, feeding sites, breeding and rest sites for birds;

• restoration and maintenance of the biotopes of many species of fauna important to the EU e.g. fire – bellied toad, crested newt, black stork, white – tailed eagle, crane, kingfisher, European beaver, otter.

Lessons learnt

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