Introduction to the Transylvania projects

The Saxon communities of the lowland Carpathian Mountains have been managing the Transylvanian landscape in a traditional manner since the 12th Century.  Each of the 200 Saxon villages in the foothills of the Carpathians had a distinctive fortified church where the villagers took refuge in times of threat.  The layout of these villages has remained virtually unchanged since the 18th century, with houses on either side of the valley and each house having a strip of land at the rear.  In addition, each household traditionally has strips of arable land and damp hay meadow in the valley bottom and larger parcels of hay meadow further up the valley. Taking a cross section through the valleys of this region, the villages and arable strips of land would be found in the valley bottom with hay meadows and pasture for cattle and sheep above.  Forest still blankets the steeper slopes of the valley. 

Cattle and sheep are owned by different households but grazed on the common unfenced pasture areas with a cow herd and shepherds accompanying them.  The cows return each night to their owners in the village and are milked in the courtyards before being turned out the following morning and grazed under the supervision of an elected cow herd on the lower pastures.  Sheep are turned out in May and graze the upper pastures in large flocks with shepherds and do not return to the valley bottom until the onset of winter in November.  The sheep are milked by the shepherds high in the valleys and the milk is used for cheese making. At night, the sheep are fenced in sheepfolds with the shepherds sleeping at spaces around them to prevent bear or wolf attacks.

This traditional form of farming has produced a High Nature Value landscape and in 2008 the European Union declared 250,000 ha of the Carpathian valleys as the Tarnava Mare Natura 2000 site. The whole area is protected as a Site of Community Importance (SCI) under the Birds Directive and 85,000 ha as a Special Conservation Area (SCA) under the Habitats Directive.  The objective of these designations is to protect the traditional uses of the landscape that have produced this species-rich mosaic of habitats and species.  The valleys contain the last lowland population of European brown bears, wolves and threatened bird species, including the lesser spotted eagle, corncrake and woodlark. The mainly oak and hornbeam forest areas contain nine species of woodpecker as well as the spectacular Ural owl.  The upland hay meadows, which have not been fertilised for centuries, contain a very diverse grassland flora and associated butterfly species whilst the wet grass areas contain great burnet, the host plant for the scarce large blue and dusky large blue butterflies.

Research objectives
This Saxon landscape and its associated populations of European flora and fauna, once seen over much of lowland Europe, are under significant threat.  In the 1990s, many of the Saxons returned to Germany and their houses and farmsteads were allocated to other ethnic groups (Roma, Hungarians and Romanians) who were not experienced in the traditional farming techniques that had been practiced by the Saxons for centuries.  Opwall is partnered with a local NGO, Fundatia ADEPT, which initially helped make the case for the Natura 2000 designation, and helped the design of EU farm payments to protect this area. ADEPT and Opwall are now establishing an annual monitoring programme to assess the effectiveness of the designation and farm payments in protecting the high conservation value of the landscape.