Wildlife
We work to save and help thrive endangered wildlife.
WILDLIFE CONSERVATION
By protecting wildlife we’re helping ensure that the natural ecosystems remain functional.
Wildlife populations in large parts of the Făgăraș Mountains have suffered severely from poaching and overhunting throughout the last twenty years. Where once big herds of chamois or red deer roamed the peaks and forests, only scattered individuals are still around. Official numbers are often overestimated or deliberately exaggerated to achieve higher hunting quotas.
The CARPATHIA project has set up its own hunters association with the aim to purchase hunting rights in the project area by auction, and to consequently fully protect the wildlife. Since the end of 2011, the project has controlled hunting area No. 21 “Dâmbovița Headwaters” and has installed intensive anti-poaching measures and modern monitoring systems. In 2017, a second hunting concession No. 22 “Rucăr” was leased to protect wildlife. Sătic and Rucăr villages are within this hunting concession, and consequently a strong focus was put on mitigating wildlife-human conflicts.
We are currently active throughout five wildlife management units and we have created an area of 78,000 ha that exists without trophy and sports hunting.
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Together with neighbouring Piatra Craiului National Park, a total of 80,000 ha is now without sport or trophy hunting.
WILDLIFE-HUMAN CONFLICT MITIGATION
In order to get acceptance for wildlife throughout the local communities, we must make sure that unavoidable conflicts of wildlife and humans remain beneath a critical level. Carnivore can kill livestock and wild boar can dig up whole meadows and gardens of local farmers. It is obvious that local communities suffer from such situations and as the responsible organisation for wildlife management in the area we must make sure that we avoid these problems as much as possible.
Our outmost priority is to avoid conflicts from the beginning. For this reason, we equip local livestock owners with electric fences, initiated a breeding programme for the “Carpatin” livestock guarding dogs (Carpathian Shepherd Dogs), which are an efficient tool in defending livestock against carnivores. We have set up two rapid response teams of our rangers together with the regional Gendarmerie, which are trained and equipped to resolve such wildlife-human conflicts in a quick and professional way.
Commencing in summer 2020, we have also introduced a totally new concept of ‘in-kind’ compensation for livestock damage due to carnivores by creating a joint venture with a local livestock breeder, who takes care of 20 cows and 100 sheep under the ownership of Foundation Conservation Carpathia, which are used to immediately replace killed livestock. At the moment, the affected livestock breeder has to call a local commission, who will analyse the cause and write a report. Whilst this report is being prepared by the Ministry a year or two might elapse, or the livestock owner may never hear from the public sector.
WILDLIFE REINTRODUCTIONS
The Carpathian fauna is almost complete, bison was missing in the Făgăraș Mountains and beavers are only present on the north side and not on the south side of the mountains. In order to fully restore the Carpathian ecosystem, FFoundation Conservation Carpathia has undertaken to reintroduce bison and beavers to the Făgăraș Mountains.
Since May 2020, the first eight bison are roaming freely in the Făgăraș mountains. We have carried out feasibility studies for other areas and we are in an advanced stage of reintroducing more bison in the innitial point and in other two new locations, in the Făgăraș mountains.
WILDLIFE MONITORING
Repeated estimates of wildlife population sizes are vital in order to determine if a population is increasing, decreasing, or stable. However, counting or obtaining reliable estimates of both ungulates and carnivore populations is extremely difficult as most of the forest species are elusive or rare.
While many commonly-used techniques are either totally unreliable, or rely on capturing, marking, and fitting of a transmitter to an animal, it is CARPATHIA philosophy to use only non-invasive methods, without disturbance to the normal behaviour, ecology or physiology of the animal.
Basically, we work with three categories of field methods: wildlife tracking, genetic sample collection, and, in the future, remote camera traps:
Wildlife snow tracking
Interpreting the indirect evidence (tracks and other signs) left behind by wildlife continues to be a valuable skill in the modern field of wildlife research and management. Besides species identification, tracks can be used to help determine home range, habitat use, and numbers of animals in a group. However, this method only works if there is a sufficient amount of snow for an extended winter season and if the rangers are able to follow the tracks for a longer period of time. Excrements, in addition, deliver insight into diet and feeding habits and a thorough investigation of carcasses often allows determination of the predator.
Our rangers are all equipped with GPS receivers that allow fast data entry, so we can continually record incidental wildlife signs. Being easier to spot, we monitor chamois also by direct observations on a foot transect along the alpine areas, surveyed several times a year.
Genetic monitoring
Recently, non-invasive sampling of DNA has allowed genetic studies of free-ranging animals without catching or disturbing them. Besides individual identification, pedigree reconstruction, and sex identification, micro-satellite genotyping provides estimates of census and effective population size based on traditional ‘capture-mark-recapture’ methods. The underlying assumption is that the proportion of ‘marked’ individuals that are ‘recaptured’ is equal to its proportion in the entire population. Here, each genetic fingerprint is treated as a ‘mark’ and a ‘recapture’ is recorded whenever an identical genotype is found. This method provides the best and most robust statistical estimate of population size. We used this technique during a pilot study for bears, red deer, and wolves in Foundation Conservation Carpathia’s hunting ground “Izvorul Dâmboviței” (or “Dâmbovița Headwaters”).
Citation:
Skrbinšek T, Jelenčič M, Boljte B, Konec M, Erich M, Iosif R, Moza I, Promberger B (2019) Report on analysis of genetic samples collected in 2017 – 2018 on brown bears (Ursus arctos), Eurasian lynx (Lynx lynx) and grey wolf (Canis lupus) in a pilot area in Southern Carpathians, Romania. Available online at https://www.carpathia.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/FCC2017.2018.FinalReport.Ver1_.1.pdf.
Remote camera traps
Camera traps are especially useful in identifying individuals of lynx, where every animal has a specific fur pattern. We started to use camera traps in the winter of 2017/18 and have been successful in identifying since now 23 different individuals in our monitoring and neighbouring area, on a total of 120,000 hectares.
To get a good and reliable estimate on the current population sizes of key species, we have combined the use of genetic analysis of scat and hair samples, the use of camera traps, and traditional sign surveys such as snow-tracking or den counts.
The full lynx monitoring report is available HERE, Appendix 1 and Appendix 2.
In addition to protecting what is present, Foundation Conservation Carpathia is also committed to bringing back what has been lost: The first eight European bison are now part of the native fauna again and we are currently preparing the grounds for reintroduction more of these mighty herbivores, in the innitial area and in outer two points.
