When Barbara Promberger first came to Romania from Austria in the 1990s, she was a young wildlife biologist who had imagined herself working somewhere much further north, perhaps in the Canadian wilderness. Instead, a master’s thesis studying the territorial behaviour of wild wolves brought her to the Carpathians, where she encountered forests unlike anything she had known at home.
“Romania had just come out of communism and the infrastructure was in a very bad condition, but what they had here was incredible nature. Austria has a lot of forests, but you couldn’t compare them with the forests I found here. A lot of them were old-growth or even virgin forests. When I entered these forests for the first time, I immediately saw the difference, the beauty and the wildness of them. I think I fell in love with the country from the very first time I came here.”
That connection kept bringing her back. Promberger spent around a decade researching large carnivores in Romania before she and her husband, Christoph, decided to stay. By the mid-2000s, however, the forests that had first drawn her to the country were changing rapidly. As forests were returned to former owners following the fall of communism, she watched areas she had known for years come under growing pressure from logging. Determined to protect what remained, Barbara and Christoph went on to co-found Foundation Conservation Carpathia in 2009, with the ambition of securing and restoring large areas of the Southern Carpathians for nature.
“It’s heartbreaking. You see all this wealth in nature and biodiversity disappearing, and you know how difficult it is to bring back because you’ve seen what has happened elsewhere. Here, we still had so much intact nature across such large areas, so it felt worth starting this project and trying to stop the logging.”
From protecting land to restoring a landscape
By the time the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme project began, work to protect and restore the Făgăraș Mountains was already underway. Foundation Conservation Carpathia had begun purchasing land for conservation, while earlier funding through the EU LIFE programme had supported the first stages of habitat restoration, including replanting damaged forests and work to restore spruce monocultures.
“We had started some restoration work through a LIFE project, especially replanting and some of the work on monocultures, but we weren’t at a stage where we could really scale it up. Looking back now, I think we were doing everything a little bit in secret. We weren’t involving communities that much, and our communication was quite poor. We thought we were doing great work, so that should be enough.”
That began to change as the work expanded.
“With the ELSP project, it was really a time when we thought, whatever we do, we need to do it on a broader scale and involve the communities much more. People needed the opportunity to see firsthand what we were doing and to be part of it.”
The team went on to restore 845 hectares of clear-cut forest, planting 2.5 million native tree seedlings, while beginning the conversion of 290 hectares of spruce monoculture towards mixed forest. Restoration also extended to alpine and riparian habitats, alongside a much broader programme of work with communities across the landscape.
Bringing back the missing pieces
Restoring habitats was only part of the ambition. European bison and Eurasian beavers had both disappeared from the Făgăraș Mountains through historic overhunting, removing species that once helped shape the landscape. During the project, 25 European bison and 62 Eurasian beavers were reintroduced, restoring processes including grazing, trampling and wetland creation.
For Barbara, one of the clearest signs that the bison reintroduction was working came when animals born in the wild began having calves of their own and moving beyond the original release areas.
“Seeing the first offspring was amazing because it’s always a sign that things are going well. But I think the real turning point is when the first individuals born in the wild have offspring themselves and start to disperse. That’s what we’ve seen with our bison herd in the past two years. They’re expanding their range, moving north and west into the Făgăraș Mountains.”
The bison have also surprised her. Barbara had worried that animals more readily associated with lower ground might struggle in the steep Făgăraș Mountains, or move down towards farmland rather than making use of the higher reaches. Instead, one herd has been tracked at 2,200 metres.
“We were a bit concerned that they wouldn’t start using the alpine areas, but one herd in particular took this path. They went up into the alpine areas and used them for grazing, rather than going down into the valleys and getting into trouble with agricultural areas. That was a very positive surprise.”
The bison are now dispersing beyond their original release areas, and the team hopes further releases to the west could eventually connect this population with another reintroduced population in Romania.
“I’m very positive that maybe in five to ten years we’ll have a completely connected bison population. That’s pretty cool.”
Bringing people with you
Reintroducing species also meant navigating how people felt about having unfamiliar wildlife back in the landscape. When beavers were released in the southern part of the Carpathian Mountains project area, local attitudes were initially relatively neutral. But as conflicts involving beavers elsewhere in Romania attracted wider attention, perceptions changed.
“There were not many conflicts with our beavers because they were staying in areas where they didn’t really get into problems with people. But nationally there were so many discussions about beavers in other areas that attitudes locally dropped dramatically. It had nothing to do with us or with our beavers, but suddenly people were scared and worried.”
Surveys revealed significant gaps in people’s understanding of the species, with some even worrying that beavers might eat their chickens. The team responded with awareness campaigns and later opened a Beaver Visitor Centre where local people and visitors could learn more about the animals and their role in river ecosystems.
The experience with bison was different. Communities were generally positive about their return, but as the animals began moving more widely, some entered villages in early spring and damaged haystacks. By then, the relationship between the project team and local communities had also changed.
“That’s when I think it helped a lot that we had already built a relationship with people. We had started to be known in the area. They knew they could call us and that we were there to support them with these conflicts. I think we managed to keep them at a totally acceptable level.”
That trust is now influencing restoration beyond the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme project. Foundation Conservation Carpathia has since begun work to return vultures to the landscape, and this time local communities have been involved from the outset. When the first griffon vulture arrived at the project’s aviary, the mayor of the village was the person who released it inside.
“That was possible because we built this relationship during the ELSP project. People saw that we’re bringing back species they don’t know, but we’re also taking care of what happens afterwards. There’s trust that if we bring back a species that might come into conflict with people, we’re there to help.”
Building a national park from the ground up
The restoration work ultimately feeds into Foundation Conservation Carpathia’s longer-term ambition to create a national park across around 200,000 hectares of the Făgăraș Mountains. Formal designation requires government approval, but building support among the 28 surrounding communities is just as important.
“Working with people is always the hardest. It’s easy to protect land and it’s easy to protect wildlife, but trying to convince people that it might be better to base your future on nature than on something else is so much harder. You really have to show how it can work before people make that first step to change.”
After years of work with communities, Barbara believes that support is beginning to gather momentum.
“Over the past five or six years, people have started to realise that we’re in for the long run. We’re not just coming in with funny ideas and then leaving again. We’re really here to support this transition. We’re coming with ideas, with knowledge and with funding possibilities. And now we really see this change.”
Foundation Conservation Carpathia is now preparing an association of communities, NGOs and public authorities that want to develop the national park together, while Sibiu County Council has formally backed the idea. Socioeconomic studies and a business plan setting out how a future park could operate and be funded are also ready. Progress at national level has been interrupted by political uncertainty, but Barbara says the groundwork is in place for discussions to resume when the opportunity arises.
“For me, a national park is still the gold standard when it comes to conservation because it means long-term protection. But it’s also something emblematic. It’s something you can promote, and that will be important if the surrounding communities are going to benefit from tourism. I think it’s also about pride. A national park is something that can give pride to the country and to the people who live there.”
A safe haven for the future
More than three decades after Barbara first encountered the wild forests of the Carpathians, her vision for the next 20 years is not simply to see the Făgăraș Mountains designated as a national park. She wants the people living around it to feel that it belongs to them.
“Our hope is that it will be established as a national park and that the communities around it are really comfortable with it, that they see it as their jewel that they have in the backyard and that they want to have protected.”
Ultimately, she hopes those communities will become the park’s strongest defenders, valuing the landscape not only for the livelihoods it can support, but for the protection that healthy ecosystems can provide.
“They should be the ones who say, ‘We want this to be protected.’ No matter what comes, they will be the defenders of the national park. I hope that awareness will be there, that people can value the protected area as their safe haven for the future.”
To find out more about the Carpathian Mountains, visit their project page. This article was written as part of a series for Restoration Works, an ambitious communications campaign celebrating the achievements of the first seven projects supported by the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme.
This article was written by Iona Haines, Communications and Network Coordinator, Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme.
