Conservation
Endangered species
By Vivid writer: Silviu Petrovan
The beautiful, rare and endangered Romanian chamois will be driven to extinction if there is no ban on hunting it
Posted: 12/05/2006
Strangely, it was the communists that saved the chamois from being completely wiped out in Romania; under communism the chamois was protected and poachers were severely punished. It was hunted only occasionally, by high ranking figures in the communist regime, and so prospered to reach populations of several thousand. But over the last decade, as hunting became a sport favoured by Romania’s newly rich – and as foreign hunters were given greater access to Romanian “game”, chamois numbers have severely declined once again.
The last several years has seen a running battle between NGOs interested in protecting the chamois on the one hand, and the Ministry of Agriculture on the other, with accusations of incompetence, negligence and abuse flying from both sides. With hunters queuing to pay up to 4,000 euros per animal, and animal welfare activists accusing the ministry of greatly exaggerating chamois numbers so as to capitalise on a higher hunting quota, while all this squabbling was going on nothing short of a massacre was perpetrated.
Last autumn an effort by the ministry to relocate four adult chamois to the Rodnei national park seemed, at last, to be official recognition that the numbers were declining. Although well-intentioned, this costly operation to relocate the wild animals was severely blighted by the deaths of two of the four chamois during the operation, undoubtedly because of the stress involved.
Even after this most unfortunate event the debate rages on, as both sides still make accusations and an increasing number of calls demand a stop to the hunting until there is concrete evidence of the total number of chamois remaining in the wild – a situation that is not confined to this animal, but also exists in the case of the brown bear and the lynx, whose numbers are similarly under great threat from hunters.
Until that moment, I personally can only wonder, after two trips to see this amazingly beautiful animal in the Retezat Mountains National Park, what can be so enjoyable about shooting an animal which doesn’t run at the sight of humans but, rather watches them with curiosity. I was able to observe the group in the picture for more than half an hour at a distance of less than 25 metres (my camera has a mere 4X optical zoom), watching them graze and relax in the last sunny days of October, knowing that the guide that took us there awaited the third group of legal hunters that season, this one from Germany, which would arrive the day after our departure. True enough, hunting is not permitted in the park but evidence suggests that this is not always respected and anyway there is no proof that individuals shot outside the park boundaries are not actual park residents in search of food or shelter, as the chamois is almost always on the move. I could have probably shot the chamois with a water pistol. There is no heroism or sense of adventure in killing such a docile animal, even more so now that it faces extinction in our mountains.
Silviu Petrovan is a founder of Societas Herpatologica Romaniae
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