Wilderness Areas in Romania: A Case Study on the South Western Carpathians

Abstract

The presence of wilderness areas in the Carpathian Mountains suggests that the Natural habitats that are part of this region still maintain their ecological functionality, but there are chances that some of these were not included into the network of protected Natural areas. There is thus an urgent need to find a method that can reliably identify them. True wilderness areas are very hard to find in the European landscape, due to strong anthropogenic impacts, which include intensive and extensive agriculture combined with other forms of resource exploitation, such as logging, overgrazing, mineral extraction, infrastructure projects, energy production and so on. The main ecological functionalities of these habitats can be permanently disrupted, thus losing the true meaning of what these areas stand for. A significant negative impact has been repeatedly recorded on populations of umbrella species, such as European brown bear Ursus arctos (Kare 1978), and other large carnivores. These species can be used as indicators for conservation actions, because of the large areas covered by their home ranges, which in turn help to protect almost all other species of interest in the region.