History

This is a short outline of the mountain shepherding in Poland. The Tatra Mountains are very small mountains but it is fascinating that with this relatively small area there is tied such a rich tradition of mountain shepherding and still working sheep guarding dogs - Polish Tatra Mountain Dogs. Human colonization began on the Tatra Mountains foreland in the thirteenth century; the villages Szaflary and Klikuszowa among others date from this time. With the moment of creating the Nowy Targ capitanate (1350, reign of king Casimir the Great) the Polish Tatra Mts. became regal property. In the foothills of the Tatra Mts. some villages were founded as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, e.g. Zakopane, Odrowaz, Bukowina, Poronin, and others. A more intense colonization may be noted in the Tatra Mts. in the second half of the eighteenth century (reign of King Stanislaus Augustus Poniatowski - the last king of Poland) - a period of intensified forest cutting and clearing of glades. Shepherding was strictly connected with this colonizing activity. The pasturage in these mountains has a fairly long tradition dating back to the sixteenth century. Its origin is linked up with the migration of the Wallachian shepherds, whose habits can be traced even in the present manners cultivated by the shepherds coming from the Tatra Mts. The Wallachian shepherds had arrived in the Tatra Mts. with their Big White Dogs together. And those dogs are ancestors of today's Polish Tatra Mountain Dogs. The oldest shepherd routes led to the mountain pastures from the oldest localities of northern Podhale (or the sub-mountain region), e.g. Klikuszowa, Szaflary, and Waksmund. At first the number of sheep was not large. For example in 1654, the four Podhale villages: Waksmund, Szaflary, Czarny Dunajec, and Klikuszowa, possessed 1840 sheep all together. Since the seventeenth century the number of sheep in all sub-Tatra localities increased. Zakopane had some 600 heads at this period. In 1767 more than 12,000 sheep fed on the mountain pastures, in 1925 - some 13,000 sheep and 2,000 heads of cattle. The greatest intensity of sheep grazing coincides with the Nazi occupation, as the highlanders took mass-wise to sheep breeding as a result of requisitions of cattle. There were up to 40,000 sheep at this time. In the years 1944 - 1947 there were some 22,000 sheep and 1,200 heads of cattle on the pastures in the Tatra Mts.Until 1960 most of the pastures in the Tatra Mountains were the property of highlanders from the foothill villages. They treated the mountain pastures as chief means of summer feeding. In 1954 the communist power in Poland created the Tatra National Park on the areas of the Tatras and since 1960 the liquidation of private property in the Tatra Mountains took place according with an ordinance of the communist power edited December 8th, 1960. The official reason of it was the intense grazing in the Tatra forests and the destruction of forest-stands. The real reason was to deprive the highlanders of their properties. The shepherds had to transfer their flocks into other places. A part of the sheep was directed to the mountain range of Beskid Sadecki. But the most of them are transferred on the areas of pasture in the Bieszczady Mts. (the Central Carpathians) every year. The lower situated meadows abound in grass but are rather small in size and served as resting places and night quarters for sheep. The alpine meadows situated at higher altitudes offer better condition for grazing because they are much more extensive, but the period suitable for exploitation is shorter there. The mountain sheep population has increase to 60,000 - 70,000 heads approximately although there are no sheep on alpine meadows in the Tatra Mts. After 40 yr. these meadow without sheep grazing are overgrown by weeds. The sheep presence was not so bad! The meadows need sheep's fertilizer. For a several years they from the Tatra National Park are willing to receive sheep again. It is said about a few thousands of sheep. But the matter is not easy. They want the shepherds to lease the mountain meadows. The highlanders want the meadows become private properties again. They all had reached a stalemate.