Transylvania may be synonymous in America with dark forests and darker forces, but I never had to use my silver evil-eye amulet during my three trips to the mountains around Brasov. My reason for traveling to this fascinating place was to help Romanian conservation biologists George Predoiu and Ovidiu Ionescu and a Dutch consulting team led by Erwin van Maanen in designing a Carpathian Ecological Network that would protect central Romania's extraordinary heritage of biological diversity and rural sustainability.

The Transylvanian Carpathians are the wildest parts of Central Europe and their ecosystems are, in fact, exceptionally productive and diverse. These ranges cover an area nearly the size of West Virginia, yet they support about 2,500 wolves, 4,500 brown bears (same species as grizzlies), and 1,500 lynx, constituting one-third of Europe's large carnivores. In comparison, no part of the lower 48 states has so many carnivores in such a small area.

Subsistence farmers that live throughout the mountains employ traditional technologies to produce cheese and other products from their sheep. Most of the families also have cattle, pigs, small flocks of chickens; and one or two horses that pull wagons and plows. Tractors are rare. Haying is an annual family affair. It's done with scythes and wooden rakes, in natural meadows. I was surprised to learn that the haying directly benefits native ungulates - the prey base for the keystone carnivores - by impeding forest encroachment into the meadows. David Quammen's Monster of God describes the human-nature interactions in more detail.

People and guard dogs are in constant attendance of sheep flocks in the Carpathians, so incidents of depredation are relatively rare. They are also tolerated as part of the "arrangement" of living in the territory of wolves, bears, and lynx. People are rarely harmed by wildlife. I relished the perspective of a local farmer who said his most serious encounter amounted to using a broom to shoo away an overly curious bear.

The Carpathian Ecological Network (CEN) is based on planning methodologies developed in the nineties by the Wildlands Project as well as a template developed for the Southern Rockies Wildlands Network Vision authored by Dr. Brian Miller, Monique DiGiorgio and others.

We expect that the CEN also will become the hub of a future Pan-European Ecological Network - a major step in the rewilding of Central Europe and a counter-balance to detrimental development projects, including poorly designed roads and eruptions of summer vacation homes. Work has begun on designing a Carpathian Wilderness Park that would rival the great national parks in Africa, North America, and Australia.

Like our Spine of the Continent Initiative in North America, the Carpathian Ecological Network is inspiring people on a continental scale. For details, contact rewild@tds.net.

Michael Soulé