Sand Dunes Stand in the Heart of Country : Poles Fight to Save Northernmost Desert

In the heart of the Krakow Jura, a region of deep valleys and lush green pasturelands, lies a five-square-mile stretch of shifting sands known as the world’s northernmost desert.

The Bledowska Desert, on a broad southern Poland plain, has fascinated tourists and scientists for generations because of its bizarre landscape and unique plant and animal life. Its name comes from the Polish verb meaning “to get lost.”

Created when Poland’s medieval kings deforested the area 600 years ago, Bledowska today is threatened by the encroachments of 20th-Century man. Plant life introduced by man covers much of the desert floor, limiting its characteristic dune formation, and Polish industry is extracting its sand to help seal spent coal mine shafts.

Created by Chance

Krakow conservationists are campaigning to preserve it.

“Man created Bledowska by chance,” said Stefan Michalik, a botanist and member of the Nature Research Protection Center at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Krakow. “He may destroy it by thoughtlessness.”

The story of how a desert formed in the middle of central Europe begins tens of thousands of years ago, Michalik said.

As the continental glacier retreated at the end of the last Ice Age, it left behind huge deposits of sand on more than two-thirds of the land area making up today’s Poland.

Barren Plain Remained

Forests eventually covered most of the land, and the sand became mixed with other soil, creating Poland’s fertile farmland.

Between the 13th and 15th centuries, Polish kings reigning in Krakow cut down trees in a broad area 30 miles northwest to fuel ovens smelting silver and other ores extracted in the region.

Left behind was a barren and dry plain that over time formed into a desert containing 3.3 billion cubic yards of pure sand.

By the end of the 19th Century--when Bledowska was six times larger than it is today--it was a major tourist attraction. Brochures advertised the “land of flying sands” and desert mirages.

‘Great Sand Surface’

“We found ourselves in the middle of a great sand surface,” wrote one visitor in 1924 whose group spotted a mirage. “A slightly wavy, dark-grayish surface of a lake appeared before us. In it the dunes and plants growing on them were reflected, so that the illusion of a nearby lake was complete.”

During the Nazi occupation in World War II, Bledowska presented German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel with an ideal site to train his famous Africa Corps for the desert campaign in Africa.

“At that time this was a large expanse of open sand, and when it was hot the temperatures on the ground were the same as on an African desert floor,” Michalik told a reporter.

Distinct Region

Until 1984 the Polish army used the desert as an artillery range, and in the late 1950s it reportedly was the launch site for experimental Polish rockets. Craters dug out by artillery shells still mark the desert floor.

Scientists have identified plant and animal life at Bledowska normally found only in more southern deserts. They include eight desert grasses, two species of desert lizards, a desert frog and a rare bird known as a kulon, found also along the Caspian Sea in the Soviet Union.

The Krakow Jura is one of Poland’s most geographically distinct areas, a chain of hills from Krakow to Czestochowa characterized by hundreds of jagged limestone rock outcroppings and caves. The desert adds to the region’s physical richness, Michalik said.

‘Unique’ Environment

“This kind of natural environment cannot be found anywhere else in central Europe,” he said. “It is unique. It is the northernmost desert in the world.”