Geography and the Environment

Keywords: romanian geography, environment, romanian wildlife, danube delta, black sea, carpathians, nature, national parks, natural parks

Romania is a country blessed with some of the most beautiful and unspoiled landscapes in Europe. Its vast forests and rolling pastures are home to an outstanding diversity of plants and animals.

The Land

Geographically, the oval shaped Romania covers an area of 237,500 sq. km and is made up of three main regions. Carpathian Mountains, Transylvanian Plateau, Danube Delta and the Black Sea.

The striking arc of the Carpathian Mountains descends into the center of the country, in a giant circle from Austria to Serbia via Slovakia, Ukraine and Romania. The Carpathians are rather young in geological terms, merely 35 million years old and extend for almost 1,500 km.

On the Romanian territory the Carpathians are divided into two main parts, the Eastern and Southern Carpathians, with a spread towards the west forming the Apuseni Mountains. The Eastern range begins with the Rodnei Massif south of the Ukrainian border and goes down to the Vrancea Mountains east of Brasov. From there the mountains take a dramatic turn to the west, forming the Southern Carpathians, with a series of massifs, also known as the Transylvanian Alps. The highest point can be found in the Fagaras Mountains, where the Moldoveanu summit reaches 2,544 meters.

The Apuseni Mountains reach heights mostly bellow 1,000 meters and are primarily limestone. They are Romania’s most extensive area of karst scenery with deep water-eroded gorges, sinkholes and many caves. Did you know?

Inside the Carpathian curve lies the Transylvanian Plateau, an area of rolling hills, forests and farmland, having a strong sense of the medieval about it. West of this are large plateaus where pastoral villages and towns lie among the hills and valleys. East and south of the mountains are the low-lying plains which end at the Black Sea and Europe’s second- largest delta region where the Danube spills into the sea.

The Danube itself forms the greater part of the southern boundary of the country, cutting through the Carpathians at the Iron Gates and changing its easterly course where it meets the Europe’s oldest mountains in Dobrogea near the Black Sea Coast, at which point it swings north and finally reaches the sea through the Danube Delta.

The forest and meadows of Romania

Romania has an impressive amount of forests and meadows. The lower slopes of the Carpathians, as well extensive parts of Transylvania, support woodlands full of lime, oak and hornbeam. As the altitude increases, so does the percentage of beech and, at around 1,400 meters, it forms distinctive stands with silver fir and sycamore. As you get even higher, Norway spruce becomes dominant, merging with the alpine zone through a blanket of bushy dwarf mountain pine and various shrubby willows. On the upper pastures and rocky heights many of Romania’s endemic flowers are to be found, including pinks and hawkweeds, alongside orchids, gentians, primroses, bellflowers and more.

Indeed the country’s vegetation is impressive but what really stands out it the traditional agricultural habitats of lower altitudes. The lack of mechanization and chemicals for farming has helped a great deal of farmland with an outstandingly rich flora to survive. The grassland is the true gem here, filled with flowers, both common and rare. The regions of South-Eastern Transylvania and the Apuseni are renowned for such beauty, being a delight from May to July.

Much of the natural steppe vegetation of eastern Romania survived until as recently as the 1950s, when huge areas disappeared under the plough. Only fragments remain, some designated as nature reserves for their plants and, especially, their birds.Less...

The use of the Romanian land

Relatively undeveloped before the World War II, the agriculture suffered quite a bit during the years of communism. The implementation of collective farming was achieved rather late, mostly through force. The agricultural investments were limited to the better farmland areas, while other marginal areas remained in low-fertility, low-production systems. The profits were taken by the state to pay off foreign debt.

After the 1989 Revolution, 80% of the farmland returned to their owners, most times this causing difficulty of establishing true ownership. The average size of a private farm is now about 2.5 hectares, the small size making the fields impractical for the use of tractors, so horse- or oxen-drawn ploughs are still commonly seen.

"Associations" have appeared, in which farmers work the land together, but the very word “co-operative” is, understandably, off-putting to the Romanian people, and a high proportion of farms remain as small-scale individual units.

27 percent of Romania is forested, with large tracts of woodland present in low-lying areas as well as in the mountains. This vast expanse of forest, and its amazing biodiversity, can be in part attributed to the system of management under the communism, which ensured detailed 10 – year plans for all state – owned woodland.

As in the case of agricultural lands, after the revolution the governments restored areas of woodland to their former owners, again the ownership creating an issue, and as a result, a great amount of uncontrolled logging occurs. The best solution would be to reinstate the 10-year forest plans. Initiatives to prevent this, such as the Natura 2000 network are already in place.Less...

Conservation of the Environment

The conservation of the environment is one of the greatest challenges for Romania. During the development of the country under the communism, the environment was not taken in consideration at all, this causing large areas of land in the countryside to be heavily polluted.

One of the worst areas to be polluted being around Copsa Mica. The Danube was canalized by the infamous Danube-Black Sea Canal also known as the Death Channel, blocked by the Iron Gates Dam, overloaded with nutrients, contaminated with chemicals, and lost hectare after hectare of its associated wetlands and floodplains.

These issues remain until today and unfortunately the inappropriate tourism development in the Carpathians and the Delta is adding to the list of threats.

The worst recent catastrophe was the spillage of cyanide from mining –waste lagoons at Baia -Mare into the Tisza river system in the winter of 2000. This had a serious impact on 1,000 km of aquatic ecosystem downstream, especially in Hungary. The Danube Delta was not affected as seriously as it was thought initially and there has been little lasting damage here.

The large open-cast gold mine at Rosia Montana in the Apuseni Mountains is still a relevant threat; however, this project is a test case for forward-looking environmental protection. Substantial private backing allows for a proper assessment of its environmental impact.

Looking over the bright side, Romania’s conservation movement is growing and an area of more than 5 percent from the surface of the country is now protected for its bio or geodiversity. The National and Natural Parks are becoming better organized as well, even if some have simply been “paper parks” and little regulation existed until recent years.

By 2006, the country had 27 national and natural parks . In addition, numerous nature reserves for smaller areas exist, appointed for their exceptional flora, fauna or geology, and nature monuments, which can be for individual features – rare trees or flowers.

The membership to the European Union has brought a sophisticated system of biodiversity protection measures in the form of the Natura 2000 network. This brings significant protective measures, as well as funding, for many of the best wildlife areas and most important species. New areas are being designated all the time.

Protecting the Wildlife

In the recent years quite a few non-governmental conservation organizations have developed. Among these are, Milvus a bird-protection charity and the Mihai Eminescu Trust, whose purpose is the conservation of the traditional elements of the Transylvanian landscape, including its grasslands and woodlands. The World Wildlife Fund is also present and has initiated the Danube – Carpathian Programme, whose multi-state Lower Danube Green Corridor Agreement product signed in 2000 is promoted as “the most ambitious wetland protection and restoration project in the world”. Romania has also signed the Carpathian Convention, a programme which encourages the protection and sustainable development of the entire mountain chain.

The constantly growing ecotourism, supported by the Romanian Ecotourism Association (AER), and based on Australian and Swedish models, not only offers access to the wild areas and wildlife within, but plays a key role in the future of the three big carnivores.

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