Apuseni mountains & NP Djerdap
ensuring connectivity in the south-western Carpathians
Carpathian mountains
- playground of the ConnectGREEN Project
The Carpathian mountain range represents one of the least fragmented areas in Europe. These mountains harbour natural treasures of great beauty and ecological value, and provide shelter for about one third of the carnivores in Europe. One of the major threats to the preservation of the unique biodiversity of the Carpathians is the fragmentation of the landscape, caused by the rapid modernization of the region (e.g. construction of highways and recreation facilities, urban development). What were once well‑connected habitats have deteriorated into isolated islands. This has led to the loss of favourable wildlife habitats, landscape fragmentation, animals being killed while crossing the roads (traffic mortality), noise and light disturbance. In the long run, these developments can have even fatal consequences for wildlife populations, limiting wildlife movement and gene flow between the (sub)populations of the species.
ConnectGREEN Project aims to contribute to maintaining and improving ecological connectivity between natural habitats, especially between Natura 2000 sites and other protected areas of transnational relevance in the Carpathian ecoregion, namely in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Serbia.
At the Carpathian level, ecological corridors were modelled and ground proofed with national and international experts. In four pilot areas, project partners demonstrated ways to identify and secure ecological corridors with the involvement of local stakeholders. Their efforts were catalogued in Action Plans in which next steps were agreed with experts and local stakeholders to further mitigate threats to ecological corridors in the pilot areas.
Apuseni mountains, south-western Carpathians & NP Djerdap
ConnectGREEN’s 2nd pilot area stretches across south-western Romania from the Apuseni Mountains in the north along the Carpathian arc across the border into Serbia. The area is a regional biodiversity stronghold and, consequently, boasts a large number of national parks, protected areas and Natura 2000 sites. The Romanian segment of the pilot area has the highest concentration of national parks in the entire country. Even non-designated areas that do not benefit from a specific protection regime display levels of biodiversity worthy of national park status in other regions of Serbia or Romania. Across the Danube in Serbia lies Djerdap National Park, covering some 63,786 hectares. It is the only area in Serbia covered by the Carpathian Convention. All three European large carnivores - bear, wolf and lynx, can be found in the project area.
(c) C. R. Papp
The region is, however, also the focus of several large infrastructure projects which threaten to disrupt the animal migration routes between individual core habitat areas, thus endangering the ecological connectivity between the southern Carpathians and the remainder of the mountain ranges to the north.
Fieldwork in southwestern Romania and Serbia
In the course of ConnectGREEN, 180 monitoring sites were monitored in the Apuseni Mountains over a period of several months with the help of more than 20 wildlife cameras. In the south-western Carpathian section of the pilot area, the team also used a set of over 20 cameras to monitor specific points. The cameras were left at each site for a minimum of 2 weeks, during which time all passing animals were recorded. These monitoring sites cover all bottleneck areas that were previously identified by the team in a modelling of ecological connectivity in the Carpathians. In Djerdap National Park, 14 cameras were set up in 3 critical zones and left there for several months.
In the Apuseni section of the pilot area alone, the camera traps captured a passing bear on 58 occasions, while a wolf was seen 32 times. Further south along the Carphatians, the cameras caught wolves on film 12 times as well as 5 individual bears. These results confirm that many of the identified corridors are actively used by wildlife, even those which enter into close proximity to the highway. The field team was also heartened to discover that several of the ecoducts constructed in the area over the past years have been accepted by local wildlife. In Djerdap National Park, wildlife cameras captured a passing bear 1 time, lynx 2 times, and wolves 140 times.
All hands on deck:
In parallel to the fieldwork, efforts were also made to engage with local stakeholders in an ongoing dialogue to secure support for the preservation of these valuable habitats. While numerous significant gains were made (like modeling, mapping and verifying a large number of corridors), the project team also found that a general negative perception of NGOs continued to linger in the minds of local communities, with the professional expertise of staff at times being called into question. During the early phases of the project, a meeting was held in Belgrade on 1 February 2019 at which the main aims and challenges of ecological connectivity preservation were presented to 36 participants from various fields, while a second meeting was held on 21 July 2021 in Colțești, Romania, that brought together 26 representatives of local authorities, environmental authorities, hunting associations, farmers, and members of parliament from 9 Romanian counties. After giving an overview of the project, the ConnectGREEN team presented the main threats to ecological connectivity in the area:
»»Infrastructure development
»»Habitat fragmentation
»»Development of inhabited areas
The attendees then jointly sought to identify and debate measures to address these issues and refined approaches to suit the particular context of the critical sites identified in the team’s mapping of ecological connectivity hotspots.
Looking ahead
The pilot area is defined by astonishing levels of biodiversity and large swathes of wilderness that act as core habitat areas for the region’s large carnivore populations. The monitoring under ConnectGREEN has confirmed that the animal migration routes between these patches remain largely intact, thus satisfying territorial needs and permitting a healthy genetic exchange between local populations. To sustain this in the long-term, the ConnectGREEN team calls for environmentally friendly spatial planning which recognises and preserves ecological connectivity: a corridor network needs to be designated by the state, according to an officially adopted methodology, and these areas be adequately managed and protected. This requires that the network be considered in forestry, hunting and protected area management plans and that these actors coordinate their efforts. Planned and existing infrastructure projects that pass through these areas must implement mitigation methods, and the functionality of this green infrastructure as well as of the corridors themselves needs to be continually monitored over time. Finally, measures supporting the peaceful coexistence with large carnivores should be promoted, ranging from awareness raising among locals and tourists to the use of specialised guard dogs and electric fencing in critical areas.
(c) R. Staník
