| Actual Image
Biebrza river (4)
cloud
![Silver Star Critiquer/Gold Workshop Editor/Silver Note Writer [C: 34 W: 77 N: 20]](http://i1.trekearth.com/misc/s-g-s.gif) (331) | Photo taken near Dolostowo village.
Biebrza (Belarusian: Bobra) is a river in north-eastern Poland, a tributary of the Narew river (near Wizna), with a length of 155 kilometres (28th longest) and the basin area of 7,057 sq. km. (7,051 in Poland).
The basin of Biebrza river is inhabited not only by hundreds of rare and endangered sorts of birds, but also by people representing diverse cultures, languages and religions. While most of the population of the region speaks standard Polish, some people in the upper river basin (municipalities of Lipsk, Dąbrowa Białostocka and partly Sztabin) speak a local dialect of Belarusian (called by them prosty jazyk - "the simple language"). The people there belong to the Orthodox or Roman Catholic church. On the north bank of the upper Biebrza there are also a few villages where so called "old-believers" live, who speak an archaic dialect of Russian. Some of these communities preserved much of their traditional culture in spite of a long lasting communist government policies aimed at assimilation of non-Polish cultural and linguistic minorities. |
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