“A Group Of Foreign Philanthropists Buys Hectares Of Land In Romania To Create A “Yellowstone Euro

The people of Făgăraş “suspected that we had found gold or uranium”, says one of the promoters of this huge park in the Carpathians: “They could not imagine that we would invest so much money just to conserve nature”, says one of the promoters of the project.

“It has to be an ambitious conservation project,” Hansjörg Wyss, one of the world’s leading environmental philanthropists, told Christoph and Barbara Promberger, promoters of the Conservation Carpathia Foundation.

It was a condition that the 88-year-old Swiss billionaire set for financing the purchase of land in Romania, a country that today has 65% of Europe’s virgin forests.

Wyss is currently co-owner of the English football club Chelsea and Forbes considers him one of the biggest philanthropists worldwide. He was persuaded to donate for the establishment of a national park in Făgăraș by the Austrian biologist Barbara Promberger and her husband Christoph, a German forester, the two of whom had been living for 30 years in a small village in Brașov county.

The goal is to create a “European Yellowstone,” as the future park’s largest donor to this initiative called it, alluding to the oldest and best-known natural park in the United States.

A national park as big as the three largest nature reserves in Spain

So far, the initiators of the project have already bought 27,027 hectares, but the goal is to create a gigantic protected space of 200,000 hectares, as much as the Sierra Nevada, Picos de Europa and Doñana national parks combined (the three are the largest nature reserves in Spain ).

This area is home to one of the most important wild ecosystems in Europe. From wolves and brown bears, to lynxes and beavers, the animals roam freely on the forested slopes of the Făgăraș Mountains. And a few years ago, 80 bison were reintroduced here, two centuries after their disappearance in these territories, thanks to a program of the Conservation Carpathia Foundation.

“This national park must serve to protect nature, but also to the economic development of the areas involved,” says Barbara.

But the organization’s rangers patrol about 75,000 hectares of forest to stop illegal logging in forests adjacent to those they own. The project aims to involve the inhabitants of the small villages, located at the foot of the Făgăraș Mountains, to provide jobs and gradually attract more visitors to the area, as well as to develop social education programs.

What problems are they having?

But the creation of the Făgăraș National Park requires the consent of the local authorities. This is where the Conservation Carpathia Foundation encounters difficulties, writes El Pais. “We’re in a post-communist country, so people are afraid of losing their property to the state again,” Barbara explains.

“We can only buy from private property, but not from city councils or property associations, so our strategy is to buy what we can and donate it to the state only if it creates a national park,” says the biologist.

The perception of the villagers in the 28 local communities targeted by the project has changed a lot over the years, but the main challenge remains to be overcome. At first, the residents viewed the foundation members with prejudice, as outsiders seeking significant revenue from their land.

“They suspected that we found gold or uranium, they couldn’t imagine that we would invest so much money just to conserve”, says Barbara, who hopes that in five to ten years the inhabitants of these villages will present an official request to the Romanian Government , to transform its area into one of the largest nature reserves in Europe.

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