We've planted 120,000 trees on a Romanian mountain - here's why

welcome to the fagarash mountains a mesmerizing mountain range in the heart of Romania these mysterious cloudy Peaks and deep green valleys are a stronghold of European Wilderness and a rare relic of a Wilder and more biodiverse past and for me there's no Wilder place in Europe it just feels different here whether it be the Lush tracks of pristine old-growth forest or the facts that the area is home to a rare and surprisingly intact ecosystem which includes the biggest populations of large carnivores in this part of the world here you'll find links stalking their prey in the snow wolves roaming in large packs and Howling late into the night and of course the mighty brown bear searching the Lush Beach forests for food but just like most beautiful and wild places it has faced some tough challenges and in these mountains they came in the form of an illegal logging crates in the early 2000s that has taken its toll on the ecosystem and completely devastated entire Mountain sites which is why for the past three years we've been planting thousands of trees in these mountains and in this video today I want to show you our latest planting area which is this clear cut right here where we've planted 120 000 trees in and I also want to tell you a bit more about why we think this ecosystem and these mountains the fagarash mountains are so special let's start by taking a look at the historical context to explain the conditions that led to where we are today our Story begins following the second world war when Romania fell under Soviet occupation which resulted in the formation of the People's Republic of Romania thousands of people suffered under the oppressive regime of Nikolai shoshesko and the country fell into deep poverty this eventually LEDs to a revolution which concluded as the Soviet Union started falling apart in 1989 the fall of the Iron Curtain revealed these big untouched areas along the border between West and Eastern Europe the Carpathian Mountains are right in the middle of this zone spanning seven countries the focus of our story is here in the fagaraj mountains which are part of the Southern carpathians it can be found right in the center of Romania they cover an area of about 3 000 square kilometers which is roughly the size of Yosemite National Park in the United States during Soviet occupation this area was protected by the communist regime under chaucesco not because they were environmentally minded but more because apparently chachesco liked to shoot bears and these areas were kept as hunting reserves for Communist party members then when the regime finally fell during the abrupt collapse of the Soviet Union many of these forests were privatized and different companies started rushing in to lock the precious wood now now let's take a look at why these forests are so important much like other mountainous areas the defining Factor here is the terrain which is incredibly Steep and it's these abrupt changes in altitudes that leads to a diversity of ecosystems with dense forests appearing in the deep valleys and Alpine Meadows in the more exposed Parts above the tree line the forests are mostly comprised of beach fur and Norway spruce but also include many other species such as witch Elm round Norway Maple and European Ash however the only native trees that really Thrive at this altitude are the Norway spruce which is the piche abis and of course those are the trees that we've planted here under the dense canopy you'll find more than 3 700 species of plants and fungi as well as a wide range of wild animals going about their lives as I mentioned earlier this area is home to the largest population of bears wolves and links in Europe among many other species of course during my various visits I've had pleasure of seeing bears but the Wolves and the links are more Elusive and they're harder to spot so I'm happy we can use these camera traps to take a look at the more private side of their lives when going through all the camera trapped footage that we have I couldn't help but includes this clip here a wolf isn't always a fully fledged apex predator on a hunt they also have a relaxed life and yeah I really like this clip so yeah just thought it would be cool to show you as well the fagarash mountain suffered a lot from illegal logging in the last couple of decades which left a lot of forests and a lot of trees looking exactly like this one right here this would have been a beautiful and Tall Norway spruce standing proud on the Mountainside but now it looks like this and the wood from this tree probably ended up being laundered and being sold all over Europe This frenzy reached a peak in the early 2000s and it's hard to say how much has been lost to both illegal and legal log but you can go take a look yourself at a satellite map the extent of the damage is simply mind numbing I've been coming here since 2017 and over the years I got to see many of these clear cuts and the Damage cannot be overstated it's very hard for me to understand how someone could think that this is an okay thing to do especially because it wasn't the locals just logging their local Forest these were International companies knowing what they were doing knowing the damage that they were causing now you might be wondering how could they log an entire Forest without anyone noticing and the tricky thing is that these areas are really remote these values are super hard to reach and of course most of this logging took place in the early 2000s when tools such as satellites and drone monitoring weren't so common and a ranger or someone interested in protecting these forests would have to check every single Valley and that means that essentially loggers could come in and clear-cut an area that is huge just like this one here in a matter of weeks before anyone noticed what was going on only for the benefits of a few companies which purchased this illegally harvested wood a clear cut is a really tough environment where any trees that are left standing quickly die leading to this eerie and depressing in sites often erosion can also start taking place and this is why it's so urgent for us to come in and plant trees another unforeseen side effects of these clear Cuts seems to be that it can lead to an increase in wind blown forests now fair warning this is a bit of speculation on my side we've not read any science behind this yet but I've heard Rangers discuss the idea and it seems that essentially these extreme wind-blown events occur right next to areas that have been clear-cut where some of the natural protection against the wind has been artificially removed thus changing the angle the wind hits the forest and leading to the situation where one storm can knock down an entire Forest I visited one of these areas last year and it's a very strange place we even made a video about this but I don't think it's as complete right now but at least the Deadwood once the trees fall can continue providing nutrients and shelter for a new Forest that is of course if it's not harvested which leaves it as a Barren clear-cut anyway what you need to take away from this whole mess is that these forests are amazing and that clear-cuts are terrible in many different ways and this is wire Partners at Foundation conservation took it upon themselves to try and protect and restore these areas they started their work in 2009 and it is thanks to their efforts that large areas are now monitored and protected by their team which now numbers more than 100 people they also moved quickly to restore these clear Cuts before too much soil was lost to erosion and this of course is where we came in we've been working with FCC since 2018 and we've planted thousands of trees together these days our partnership also extends to protecting Wildlife using technology and supporting reintroductions but more on this in an upcoming video so let me show you around our planting area which of course used to be a wonderful Forest of Norway spruce but right now all we have is a sea of stumps this is the Mountainside we are working on it was locked about a decade ago and it sits next to a forest which was illegally thinned over the years and then fell in a wind blow event and this year is a map of our planting area as you can see it is a rather strange shape but it's like that mostly to complement natural regeneration and also some planting from last year unfortunately I have no videos of the tree planting itself because our whole team atmosy Earth was busy at various projects and the tree planters just had to get on with planting nevertheless we of course are sharing a complete drone flyover a set of 360 degree photos of the area and maps and GPS coordinates so you can check it out for yourself be warned that the area is pretty hard to reach foreign s we have a very narrow planting window we have to plant just after summer so that it's not too hot but also before the first Frost as you can see there's been some Frost recently but we managed to get our trees in just in time as I mentioned before we mostly planted Norris Spruce here because it's a high altitude area which happens to be the case with much of our planting in this region now to complement all of this and to give you a more accurate picture of how our planting area will look like in a few years I want to show you one of our oldest planting areas from 2018 and to get there I had to go on a hike with Tom from Mossy Earth David a ranger from Carpathia and his friend Sebastian who's a mountain guide and while we struggle up the mountain I think it's a great time to explain how we fund all of this work if you didn't know already the way we fund this work as well as all our other rewilding projects is through our Mossy Earth membership which is essentially a monthly subscription for rewilding we use the money we receive directly on projects through a mix of our own projects and Partnerships like this one with FCC we focus on interventions that deliver the most impact for our limited funds such as working directly with keystone species or by pioneering new techniques and to ensure that we use the money well every single project we green light is carefully planned and monitored by one of our conservation biologists to keep you informed we of course make these videos that you're watching right now but we also report everything on our app and our website which includes both the successes of course but crucially also the failures which are really important lessons which we want to share we also have a Discord server where you can chat with a team and when you become a member you also get to vote on some key project decisions to help guy our efforts as well as approve and comment on our spending reports on a quarterly basis it's pretty cheap to join and I think it's a really fun way to engage in rewilding but above all it's impactful so if you're interested in becoming a member please consider heading over to mossy.earth to learn more so this here is actually an area that we've planted four years ago it was the the first planting area we had with Carpathia in the fagarash mountains and not all of these trees here are ours of course some of these are just natural regeneration but this would have been a Logging Road maybe 10 15 years ago and what Carpathia did is they've flattened it or flattened it they've aligned it with the Mountainside and yeah then planted loads of trees on them and I think this for instance is a prime example of a tree that we planted four years ago so as you can see they're doing really really good and uh yeah it's a it's actually hard to recognize the area now four years later compared to when I was here it's uh it's changed a lot and that's really nice to see another reason it was hard to recognize the area was because of the crazy weather which unfortunately did not allow me to fly the Drone we have limited time when visiting these projects and this time I was here with Tom and we went to both Slovakia and Romania in one trip all by train so we did not have many days to allow the weather to collaborate with our plans nevertheless I'm happy to have visited our old planting area because it was cool to see those trees just a little bit taller but it's not just me looking at a tree in the rain there are actual peer-reviewed research papers done on this subject such as this one published on the Journal of Environmental Management which looked at carpathia's work and concluded that the results show active restoration activities to be very effective at facilitating the recovery of cleared forests in small parts of the landscape I'll link the paper in the description if you want to take a look I'm really proud of what we've achieved here and you should be too as a most serious member you contributed to the restoration of these clear cuts and the amazing forest that we'll be standing here in 20 30 100 years from now are due to you you've helped do this and to me that's just so amazing that so many people got together and decided hey let's restore these ugly ugly clear cuts and bring back the pristine forests that should be here we are running out of areas to plant in these mountains so this coming year we're planning to turn our focus more towards the wildlife side of things by implementing projects such as Wildlife monitoring dealing with the human Wildlife conflict and of course the most exciting of them all wildlife reintroductions those are just some of the ideas that we are excited to implement and if you think those kinds of projects are worth supporting then please consider heading over to mossy.earth to learn more about our membership until next time cheers

Channel: Mossy Earth

Views: 369,751

Keywords: carpathian mountains, romania, fagaras mountains, fagaras mountains romania, Reforestation Fagaras, Reforestation Carpathians, rewilding europe, Rewilding Carpathians, Brown bear, european brown bear, eurasian lynx, european wolf, european wolves, wildest part of europe, European wilderness, Mossy Earth, Duarte de Zoeten, Rewilding

Id: 67pquY70ZJM

Length: 13min 59sec (839 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 24 2022