1 / comment est organisé le pastoralisme chez vous ? Est-ce
que vous avez des brebis (moutons) ou des vaches ou les 2 ?
We have both,
cattle and sheep, and in many cases they are managed by the same team
of shepherds.
2/ est ce que
les troupeaux d'élevage sont toujours gardés ? Qui les
gardes ? des adultes ? des enfants ?
The animals
are guarded all the time, by adults. I'm talking here about the cattle
and sheep which are going up in the mountains for the summer season,
and they stay up there all the time, from mid May until September. These
animals are milked in the mountain twice a day and the main products
are various brands of cheese. They belong to the local communities.
Each family owns 1-2 caws, 10-15 sheep, and they put them together in
spring, a chief shepherd is hired by the community and takes care of
everything. His payment is in products, that he sells on the market.
Another part of the cheese goes to the animal owner, for its own needs
or for selling.
3/ Est ce que
les lieux où se trouvent les troupeaux sont loin des villages
? Est-il possible d'y aller en voiture ? Quelle distance ? Faut-il y
aller à pied ? Combien d'heures de marches ?
There are 2
categories of pastures. Primary ones, natural, in the alpine area, at
altitudes over 1700-1800 m, and secondary ones, openings in the forest
in the mountain area, from 1000 to 1700 m, which were created by the
locals during the recent history (several hundreds of years). Few of
them are accessible by car. For most of them the walking time varies
from 30 min to 4-5 hours, for the highest ones. I would say that the
average is around 2 hours walking from the end of the car roads.
4/ Si les troupeaux
sont gardés, y a-t-il des cabanes pour les bergers ? Avec quel
équipement ? Peut-on avoir des photos électroniques ?
There are wooden
houses, which are used for sleeping and for milk processing. The processing
is done presently the same as 200 years ago, I would say. Probably after
2007, when we will join the EU, there will have to be some changes,
if those people will still want to sell that cheese. There is a photo
attached with one of those houses. The equipment is a fireplace (the
smoke is going out through the roof), and a lot of wooden and metal
pottery, used for milk processing. The back room is used for cheese
keeping.
5/ Y a-t-il
beaucoup de prédations de la part des ours sur les animaux d'élevage
? Avez vous des statistiques pour chaque années des bêtes
mortes et blessées ?
6/ Y a-t-il des accidents avec les personnes ? Si oui, quel genre d'accidents
? Y a-t-il des personnes tuées par les ours ?
The average
is 2% per year. And the predators are the bears and the wolves.
Many of those are happening during the night, or during the hot summer
days when the animals are entering the forest. There are some accidents.
Around 10-15 people are wounded by bears every year (the wolves never
attack people), 3-4 deadly. But most of the accidents are not happening
with the shepherds. They know how to behave. The fruits and mushrooms
pickers, tourists, locals from the mountain villages, and rarely towns
where the bears are coming to eat from the garbage. But please keep
in mind that there are 4500-5000 bears in Romania, and around
3500-4000 wolves. The electrical fences are starting now to be used
during the night, but they are more effective against the wolves.
7/ Est ce qu'il
est possible de faire de la randonnée librement dans votre parc
? Quelle est la réglementation des activités de loisir
vis à vis de la présence de l'ours ?
Yes, it is possible,
and this is the main way of visiting the park. Usually the bears are
runing away when they see people. The accidents happen when you go very
quiet and you surprise a female with cubs. There are no special regulations
yet. But we will have some in the near future, especially regarding
keeping the food (sometimes the bears are destroing the tents, if they
smell food), and the behaviour in the forsted areas.
8/ Est ce qu'il
existe une chasse à l'ours ? Si oui, comment est-elle organisée
?
9/ Est ce que les ours sont nourris par l'homme ?
Yes, the bears
are fed now in many areas. This is a mistake, in my opinion. I think
we should provide some food in hard times, but not all the time. This
is leading to a comportament change and it is increasing the numbers.
Probably in the future this activity will be gradually reduced. You
can see, in one afternoon, 10-15 bears coming to those feeding points.
The hunting is done either at the feeding points (which is not very
ethical) and through the clasical method, with people chasing the bears
towards the hunters line, which is becoming a sort of extreme sport,
sometimes. In this moment there is an intense public debate on the harvesting
quotas for bears. There are some NGOs saying that too many bears are
killed, and that the figures are over evaluated. My personal feeling
is that we should reduce the feeding, stop the hunting at the feeding
points and do the evaluation very transparent, together with the NGOs
and the media, so we are sure we are using the right figures. For the
moment, because of that scandal, the SRG (scientific review group) dealing
with the CITES convention in the EU, decided to ban the import of bear
trophees in the EU from Romania, until a transparent evaluation is done.
But this is probably temporary, until some of the measures that I mentioned
will be applied. Anyway, I do not think that the bears sould not be
hunted anymore in Romania. They have no natural enemy, and the population
will fast increase, causing more problems than ussualy with people and
herds, so there is a danger to have a much stronger opinion against
them than now.
10/ Quelles
recommandations donnez-vous aux touristes et randonneurs quand ils se
trouvent face à un ours ? Avez-vous un document écrit
en anglais ou français ?
You can look
on the US web pages on that and find a lot of info on the right
behaviour, in English. There are also pepper sprays made especially
for that, and a friend of mine is alive now because he had the spray
with him at the right moment (they were checking some traps for wolves,
for research, and they went very quiet to the trap area, in order not
to scare the wolf, but a bear female was around and charged).
11/ pour garder
les troupeaux de moutons ou de vaches, avez vous des chiens ? Quelle
race ? est-ce efficace pour protéger les moutons contre l'ours
?
There is a breed
of Romanian
Sheperd (it was recognised last year , Carpathian
sheepdog ), but the pure lines are used more for pets than for
the field work. The sheperds have dogs, bred locally, who look a little
bit the same as the fashion ones. They can't afford to buy a pure one,
they are too expensive, so they are using the local genetic fond. The
dogs are more effective against the wolves. Against the bears, they
are noisy, and often the bears are running away if they are surrounded
by 4-5 dogs. Those dogs like to attack also tourist ladies, for the
fun of the shepherds, who are calling them back in the last moment.
Rarely, few tourists are bitten by the dogs. There is a picture attached
with a genuine sheep dog (not the pure breed).
