The Making of a ‘European Yellowstone’

It was my first visit to Romania’s Southern Carpathian Mountains in 2018, and I was standing beside a derelict sheepfold high above the Dambovita Valley. To the east, the imposing limestone cliffs of Piatra Craiului, or Kings’ Rock, towered overhead. All around me was a panorama of deep valleys, soaring mountains and the ever-present forest.

Beneath a canopy of old-growth trees, an array of animals — wolves, European brown bears, boar, eagles, lynx — were thriving.

Here among the Fagaras Mountains, the highest reaches of the Southern Carpathians, and tucked away in an unlikely corner of the European Union, an immense conservation project was underway. The ultimate aim: the creation of a “European Yellowstone.”

Accompanying me on my first trip was Mihai Zotta, the technical director of Foundation Conservation Carpathia, or F.C.C. Founded in 2009, F.C.C. is working to protect a vast area of the Carpathian forests — by purchasing property, leasing hunting rights, rewilding the land and halting illegal logging.

Eventually the plan is to return their landholdings to the public in the form of a national park based around the Fagaras Mountains, which, sitting alongside the existing Piatra Craiului National Park, would create a chain of parks and a wide-reaching wildlife reserve.