EXECUTIVE SUMMARY - UNESCO World Heritage

Tab. 4: Dynamics of number of Myotis myotis during hibernation in the Karst caves of the Uholka – Shyrokyi
Luh
Year 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005
Nos. of 495
bats
719 658 687 978 988 1016 1020 985 1076 1120 1007 1145 1056
Criterium (vii): The serial nomination “Beech Primeval Forests of the Carpathians”
evidently contains areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance. Indeed, this
argument can not be discarded in the face of the real impact that the appearance of Europe’s
primeval forests has exerted on the mindset of people and artists in particular, who in turn
have hugely influenced our culture and standards by which we perceive and measure beauty
and aesthetical quality – Czeslaw Milosz, a 1980 Nobel Prize winner in literature. He wrote:
“The interiors of certain Gothic cathedrals − Strasbourg, for example − replicate man's
smallness and helplessness in his middle zone between hell and heaven, amid the columns of
the primeval forests which still covered large areas of Europe when the cathedrals were
built” 4 . Translated in the language of science, the nominated series’ aesthetic value resides in
the original tree species composition, structure and monumental dimensions of trees, the
amount of impressively looking trees necromass that according to perception research
accounts to their wild look, documented by early historians (e. g. Herodotus of Halicarnassus,
Tacitus). According to the modern science of the imaginary, European primeval forests
became one of the important imaginative sources, from which the Gothic architecture
developed. The works of Eliade 5 , Le Goff 6 , Matteoli 7 , Schama 8 and Ovidian 9 have
documented how the image of heaven in Christianity mixed with the image of wild forests.
The hall-way, cathedral-like appearance and pattern of the nominated properties features
easily recognizable, featuring full-boled, tall, straight trunks of beech trees. Despite a less
dramatic character of the local landscapes, the beauty and impact of the primeval forest look
(of similar beech or oak forests that once covered a great deal of the European continent) on
the aesthetical perception of the Gothic thinkers and architects are well documented.
According to Matteoli (1994), “The forest, an overwhelming presence of the great North, is
4
Czeslaw Milosz (b. 1911), Lithuanian-born Polish poet. “Symbolic Mountains and Forests”, Visions from San
Francisco Bay, Farrar Straus (1982)
5
Eliade, M., 1952: Images and symbols
6
Le Goff, J., 1984: Medieval Imagination
7
Matteoli, L., 1994: Notes for a history of glass in architecture: the Cathedrals
8
Schama, S., 1995: Landscape and Memory
9
Mircean, O., 2002: At the Confines of the Imaginary: The Desert
For full quotations see Chapter VII. Bibliography
43