The new Carpathian Large Carnivore Center is to be "built on the other side of town," Promberger says, "so that people don't immediately flood the environmentally sensitive areas."
Construction is to start this spring, with a target completion date in 2005. The facility will stretch over 30 hectares (about 75 acres), and will include a lecture hall, classrooms, and spacious enclosures for bears, wolves, lynx , and examples of their prey, to be obtained from zoos and game farms.
There will also be exhibition halls describing the large carnivores and their habitat. One room representing the conflicts between bears and humans will show video of the famous bears of Racadau.
In the forest surrounding the suburb of Racadau near the city of Brasov live bears who regularly scrounge for food out of the neighborhood garbage bins. This bear show became so well known that tourists regularly gathered outside in the street, waiting for the bears to appear.
Former CLCP staff member Annette Mertens in early 2003 counted 37 bears visiting the bins, up from 20 in 1998 when she began studying them. Among the bears were cubs and their potentially temperamental mothers. Some bears became so accustomed to humans that they woud allow themselves to be touched and even take food from people's hands. There was even one report of a bear sleeping on an old mattress inside an apartment building.
After analyzing the situation and the obvious dangers caused by the bears' close contact with humans, the CLCP submitted a plan to the city hall for the construction of bear proof garbage bins, which would ultimately persuade the bears to look else where for food. The plan was rejected and instead a bear hunt was organized.
Mertens soon afterward left to pursue a Ph.d. in Italy.
Promberger today shrugs off his disappointment. He and the remaining CLCP team members have become all too accustomed to clashing with local governments and their sometimes illogical and corrupt decisions.
One of their biggest conflicts developed in 2000 when the regional government approved plans for a quarry on the outskirts of Piatra Craiuli National Park. Quarry operations would have produced a stream of 40-ton trucks racing through the Zarnesti valley every four minutes. Dust, noise, and blasting could have polluted and destroyed the natural reserves, ruining the eco-tourism program.
"The quarry has since disappeared from our list of problems but that doesn't mean the list of problems has ended," says Marin.
The CLCP is now concerned about proliferating weekend cottages in the valley bordering the national park. The narrow valley is an important wintering area for red deer and the passage of the large carnivores who follow them, as well as for shepherds, their livestock, and hikers.
"The cottages will be devastating to the tourism program," says Promberger. "Now when a visitor leaves Zarnesti and goes into the forest and mountains, he first experiences this beautiful valley. But if this construction continues he will leave Zarnesti and then suddenly come upon another village of super luxury bungalows, and the scenery is spoiled. In the last 10 years we have seen that probably about half of these valleys in Romania have been destroyed. We said to the town hall, 'If you take conservation seriously, than save this valley. Keep it as your capital.'"
The CLCP did not form in 1993 to become involved in politics--but this has become an inevitable outgrown of studies begun initially just to better understand wolves and their relationship with humans.
For centuries this had consisted mainly of conflict between sheep-killing wolves and shepherds.
Shepherd Gheorghe Corca, for example, in 30 years of sharing wolf habitat, has used his club on wolves and bears more times than he can count on the seven fingers of his two hands.
The CLCP learned in surveying 30 shepherds' camps that they had lost recently 79 sheep and lambs to large carnivores, primarily wolves.
To prevent wolf predation on sheep, the CLCP introduced electric fencing. It worked well enough that the Romanian government purchased another 10 electric fences for the use of local shepherds, and continues working with the CLCP to improve the co-existence of wolves and shepherds.
Promberger feels relatively happy about the successes of the CLCP, as it metamorphizes from field research into becoming a community institution.
"When I first came here, a lot of people felt like they were living in the Middle Ages because there were so many wolves running around. They felt they had to change this in order to join the west. I said "No! You have to keep them here.' There was no sense of pride about this. Now this has changed and people see this is a piece of heritage that western countries have lost."
[More about CLCP can be found at <www.clcp.ro >.
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