‘A Yellowstone for Europe’: Romania’s ambition for a vast new wilderness reserve

23.10.2023 - 10:29 / theguardian.com

Up on the hill we spy them: dark, imposing forms moving through the dense forest. It’s a group of bison wandering wild in Romania’s Făgăraș mountains. I stand silently with my guide Răzvan Dumitrache as the animals graze.

This area of Transylvania, at the southern edge of the Carpathian mountains, is among the wildest places in Europe. Brown bears, wolves and lynx roam the forested hillsides – and bison were recently reintroduced after a 200-year absence as part of the work of Foundation Conservation Carpathia. FCC’s ambitions are not small: it aims to create the continent’s largest forested national park. A 101,000- hectare (250,000-acre) wilderness reserve. A Yellowstone for Europe.

“The idea is for a park that will not only protect forests and wildlife, but also support local communities with ecotourism and nature-positive businesses,” says Răzvan.

Romania has more than 6m hectares of forest, of which a significant portion is still “virgin”, unfragmented areas with no human settlement, home to some of the few remaining sectors of old-growth forest in Europe. But illegal logging has cleared vast swathes of forest, and the destruction continues.

Since its inception in 2009, FCC’s biologist founders, Christoph and Barbara Promberger, and a team of philanthropists and conservationists, have been fundraising to purchase tracts of forests to stop logging – as well as buying areas to reforest. It’s a conservation model inspired by the Tompkins project in South America – with the goal being a vast park that’s “large enough to support significant numbers of large carnivores and to allow evolutionary processes to happen”.

So far, 26,900 hectares of forest and grassland have been bought and protected and more than 4m saplings planted. FCC rangers patrol 75,000 hectares, and this has led to a halt in logging in neighbouring forests too. In another innovative move, an FCC association has bought the hunting rights to an additional 78,000 hectares, to protect wildlife from trophy hunters.

Involving local communities, providing jobs and slowly bringing more visitors to the area is part of the plan. I’m here to sample the ecotourism offering, hiking to hides and campsites and watching wildlife. Before we walk to Poiana Tamas wilderness camp we stop at one of nine tree nurseries, where a mixture of native species are tended until they can be planted out. We visit the education centre too, where children learn about the importance of the landscape and how they can become involved in its protection.

The hike is steep in parts as our path zigzags through forests. We see a viper, and pass some fresh (and huge) bear prints: gouge marks on a tree and overturned stones reveal its hunt for food. Knowing we could encounter