Janow Forests

Lasy Janowskie spread across the sandy plain south of Lublin, mostly pine with alder in the wet hollows, and some 390 square kilometres of them have been a landscape park since 1984. The reason birdwatchers come is chains of fish ponds - carp ponds covering more than 2,000 hectares, about 150 years old and many built on natural swamps, one of them inside the Imielty Lug reserve - which produce exactly the shallow, weedy, gradually drained water that waterbirds want. The list here is long: ferruginous duck, which is scarce in Europe, along with bitterns, black-necked grebes, marsh terns, cranes, and white-tailed eagles overhead. Away from the ponds the forest is genuinely empty, with peat bogs, wolf territory and marked trails that see very little traffic. It is one of the least visited large forests in Poland for its size.

The landscape

• A landscape park of about 390 square kilometres - pine on sand with alder in the wet ground.
• Nineteenth-century carp ponds - more than 2,000 hectares of water and wetland.
• Scarce waterbirds - ferruginous duck, bitterns, black-necked grebes and marsh terns.
• Emptiness - trails through peat bog and pine with almost no traffic.

When to go

April to September; spring for birds. A day.

Practical notes

The ponds are working fisheries and access is around them, not across them. Ticks and mosquitoes are both bad. Signage is thin and tracks are sandy. There is very little accommodation inside the forest.

Nearby

Janow Lubelski is on the northern edge; Roztocze is east.

Key facts