Romania's Wild Carpathian Mountains Protected
6/1/99
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Title: Romania's Wild Carpathian Mountains Protected
Source: Environmental News Service
Status: Copyright 1999, contact source for permission to reprint
Date: June 1, 1999
WASHINGTON, DC, June 1, 1999 (ENS) - The World Bank has approved a
$5.5 million grant for Romania to support sustainable conservation of
the biological diversity and ecological integrity of the forest,
alpine, and meadow ecosystems of Romania's Carpathian Mountain chain.
The Carpathians are a major mountain system in southeastern Europe,
extending 900 miles along the borders of the Czech Republic,
Slovakia, Romania, Poland, and the Ukraine. The region has a rich and
varied wildlife that shelters in vast areas of unvisited woodlands.
Its inhabitants still follow a simple pastoral way of life little
changed by modern civilization.
One component of the World Bank project focuses on strengthening
Romania's national framework for biodiversity conservation. US$1.1
million is earmarked for this effort. The building of public support
for the idea of biodiversity conservation in these wild mountains has
been accorded a budget of US$700,000.
The project will work towards developing models for protected area
and forest park management at a cost of US$6.2 million.
The new Biodiversity Conservation Management Project will establish
three demonstration sites in the Carpathian Mountains for inter-
sectoral, participatory planning and sustainable management of the
natural ecosystems.
The funding will help develop mechanisms to support replication of
these activities at other priority conservation sites. Project
management and monitoring will move forward with a budget of
US$800,000.
The total cost of the project is US$8.8 million, including US$2.4
million from the Romanian government and US$0.9 million from
Romania's National Forest Authority. Some biodiversity protection is
already taking place on a volunteer basis in the Carpathian Mountains
of Romania. A wolf conservation project under the direction of the
French group European Conservation covers an area of 3,000 square
kilometres around Brasov, a town in the heart of the Rumanian
Carpathian mountains. The wolves are tracked by ecovolunteers with
rangefinders to study their daily activities, the limits of their
territory and their social structure.
Romania has the largest brown bear population in Europe outside the
Soviet Union with an estimated 6,000 bears in the Carpathian
Mountains and the Transylvanian Alps, according to research presented
by Christopher Servheen to an international bear conservation meeting
in 1989. This bear population numbered less than 1,000 animals in
1950. More than 4,000 square kilometres have been reoccupied by
bears in the past 20 years, Servheen said. The Carpathian Mountains
is some of the most productive brown bear habitat in Europe. It has
the highest population densities of brown bears in the world except
for coastal populations along the Pacific coast of Asia and North
America.
Sport hunting permits are limited, and fewer than 300 bears are shot
legally each year with additional bears taken illegally. Captive
breeding for release is practiced in Romania, and more than 300 bears
have been captive raised and released by Romanian forestry staff.