Promberger has spent the past 10 years researching large carnivores in the southern Carpathian mountains and teaching livestock herders and beekeepers to use nonlethal techniques to control predation. Since 1995 Promberger and the CLCP have also introducing eco-tourism to a region which previously economically benefited from wildlife only through sport hunting by the Communist ruling elite--and not benefiting much, at that.
Promberger is now transitioning into building and operating the Carpathian Large Carnivore Center, to further establish the idea that the Piatra Craiului National Park region in southern Carpatians can become to Europe somewhat as the Yellowstone National Park region is to the U.S.--at once a critically important wildlife habitat and the most important economic engine in an area with few other non-extractive industries.
The Carpathian mountain range is home to one third of Europe's large carnivores west of Russia. There are 3,500 wolves living in Romania, a nation the size of Michigan. This is almost as many wolves as exist in the entire United States. There are 5,500 brown bears, nearly five times as many as there are of their cousins, the grizzlies, in the U.S. Lower 48. Lynx are seen as often in the southern Carpathians as anywhere.
Though Romania includes some of the most unspoiled wild beauty in Europe, with dense forest covering more than a quarter of the nation, it suffers from some of the worst environmental degradation as well. Logging, mining, and agriculture have been the foundations of the Romanian economy for as long as the nation as existed. Poverty, domination by more powerful neighbors, and political corruption drove the use and abuse of Romanian resources almost without restraint during most of the 20th century.
"People are not ignorant about it, but have neither a negative nor positive attitude toward it. They are indifferent," Marin believes.
That cold indifference is starting to thaw, thanks in part to pressures from the European Union. The efforts of the CLCP and similar organizations in promoting eco-tourism are beginning to show Romanians that they can benefit from protecting wild habitat.
The whole idea of eco-tourism was so little known in Romania just seven years ago, when the CLCP began their work, that the Minister of Tourism did not even know the meaning of the term.
After getting that straightened away, the CLCP faced the difficulty of building up eco-tourism in Zarnesti, a community well-situated as a base for wildlife observation, but lacking any tourism infrastructure to speak of. Previously a center of armament making, Zarnesti was literally closed off from the world during the regime of deposed dictator Nicolai Ceausescu.
The program rapidly developed, underwritten by the World Wildlife Fund, the German outdoor apparel maker Jack Wolfskin, the European Nature Trust, and the Liz Claiborne Foundation. Within just a few years Promberger and associates had encouraged the opening of dozens of family-owned lodgings, a horseback tourism center, and development of a souvenir trade, creating jobs for nearly 200 people.
This involved dealing often with cultural cognitive dissonance.
"For several years we were trying to help build a horse riding center in Zarnesti," Promberger recalled in the 2002 CLCP annual report, "which proved very difficult due to the high initial investment costs, and due to a different understanding of animal animal welfare among western horse-riding travel agencies (and their clients) and the local perception of horses and the conditions that were provided for them. After three unsuccessful attempts, and almost giving up on it, we finally found the right person to operation the business, who built nice stables consistent with western standards for the horses."
HOME PAGE