High in the Southern Carpathian Mountains in Romania, at altitudes up to 2,200 metres, herds of European bison move across open slopes and forest edges. The highest recorded range for the species in Europe in modern times.
They graze, push over saplings, open dense woodland and create patches of sunlight in what might otherwise become closed forest. They are not fenced. They are not fed. They are not managed like livestock.
They are, in Frans Schepers’ words, “a new wild population.”
Schepers is Executive Director of Rewilding Europe, and the Southern Carpathians landscape in southwestern Romania is one of the organisation’s most ambitious long-term rewilding landscapes. What is happening here is not simply species reintroduction. It is an attempt to restore ecological processes at scale.
Beyond protection
For decades, European conservation focused on protecting fragments of biodiversity, fencing habitats, fighting threats, stabilising decline.
Rewilding begins from a different premise.
“Nature is not a sick child that needs constant treatment,” Schepers says. “Nature is our biggest ally. It’s a very strong force. We depend on it. Not the other way around.”
Instead of fighting degradation case by case, rewilding seeks to re-activate the natural forces that shaped Europe’s landscapes long before modern land use.
“When you want to restore ecological functioning of landscapes, it comes with a lot of different things,” Schepers explains. “Natural forest regeneration, free-flowing rivers, predator-prey dynamics, natural grazing. These processes have shaped Europe’s landscapes for millions of years, and we want to give them space again.”
The Southern Carpathians is a connected landscape that could eventually exceed one million hectares and offer rare spatial continuity in Europe. Wolves, bears and lynx were already present. What was missing were the large herbivores capable of structuring the landscape. Bison!
Why bison matter
In 2014, after extensive preparation and municipal approval, the first 15 European bison were released into the Țarcu Mountains in Southern Carpathians. Today, the population stands at roughly 250 animals, roaming completely free and about half of them born in the wild. The long-term goal is 500 which is considered a minimum viable population for genetic resilience. The ecological reasoning is straightforward.
“Without grazing,” Schepers says, “everything in Europe would become a closed forest. Many people think that’s the climax vegetation. But they forget that large herbivores were always there at scale.”
Bison act as landscape architects. They open forest structure, create micro-habitats and maintain mosaics of woodland and grassland that support insects, birds and amphibians.
“They keep landscapes open. They create habitats for species that need sunlight,” Schepers explains. “We believe that at least 60% of Europe’s terrestrial flora and fauna depends directly or indirectly on these half open woody landscapes”.
Large herbivores such as bison do more than shape vegetation. They also influence fire dynamics. By grazing and trampling dense undergrowth, they reduce the build-up of dry biomass that can act as fuel during increasingly hot and dry summers. In landscapes where traditional livestock grazing has declined, this accumulation can intensify wildfire risk.
“Reintroducing natural grazing helps create a mosaic of open patches and woodland, slowing the spread of fire and making ecosystems more resilient under climate stress”, as Schepers notes.
At current herd sizes, the ecological impact remains modest but visible.
“Still small,” he notes. The ambition, however, is scale. Free-roaming at continental scale Unlike controlled reintroduction sites, the Carpathian bison are free-roaming across community lands, hunting concessions and national parks.
“There’s no feeding,” Schepers says. “They are completely on their own.”
GPS collars track movements. Scientists monitor reproduction and genetics. But governance is intentionally light.
“It’s like roe deer,” he says. “This is a wild animal, and it’s protected.”
This minimal-intervention philosophy is central. The goal is not to curate nature, but to create conditions under which it can function independently. Living landscapes, living communities.
The reintroduced European bison in Romania’s Țarcu Mountains also act as natural climate heroes by helping to capture an additional 54,000 tonnes of carbon annually. Through grazing and soil compaction this also leads to significant storage of carbon in the soil. A herd of 170 bison can store CO2 equivalent to removing up to 43,000–84,000 petrol cars from the road, enhancing grassland carbon storage by roughly 10 times. https://globalrewilding.earth/rewilded-bison-are-climate-heroes/
Rewilding at this scale inevitably affects people
The Țarcu Mountains are not empty wilderness. They are lived landscapes with municipalities, shepherds, orchard owners and hunters. Before the first release, Rewilding Europe sought agreement from local municipalities. Concerns ranged from crop damage to liability. Instead of relying primarily on compensation, the team prioritised prevention. Rapid-response teams were established. Sensitive areas were fenced strategically. A “Bison Smart Community” approach inspired by coexistence frameworks for bears used in North America was introduced.
“When damage happens, it’s already emotional damage,” Schepers says. “Prevention is always better.”
There were incidents. Bison entered orchards. Once, a small group wandered into a cemetery. But something shifted over time.
Tourism began to grow. Wildlife tracking tours emerged. Guesthouses marketed sightings. Calves were born in the wild. The animals became part of regional identity.
“It has become an important factor in terms of pride and identity of the region,” Schepers says.
Rewilding here is not imposed from above.
“You build from the bottom,” he says. “It cannot be top-down. It has to be bottom-up.”
Financing long horizons is not control of nature
Rewilding Europe’s landscapes are structured as 20-year commitments. That timeframe reflects ecological and social reality.
“You cannot do a transition of a landscape in three or five years,” Schepers says.
Funding is diversified combining private foundations, European Commission support and unrestricted donor contributions. This mix enables stability beyond short grant cycles. The underlying insight is pragmatic: ecological transition requires financial patience. Critics sometimes argue that rewilding is redesigning nature at the risk of “playing God” when reintroducing species and reshaping ecosystems. Schepers dismisses the premise.
“People think we need to control and design nature. That is ridiculous,” he says. “Nature knows how to do it by itself. We are creating the right conditions for nature to restore itself.”
At continental scale, manual ecological management would be financially impossible.
“We cannot restore nature at scale in Europe manually. There is just no money for that.”
Nature, he argues, is the only scalable restoration technology humanity has.
“It has proof of concept through hundreds of millions of years.”
A European shift
The Southern Carpathians are one node in a wider network of rewilding landscapes. Through the Global Rewilding Alliance, more than 260 initiatives globally now connect around similar principles.
“Protect the best and restore the rest,” Schepers says.
Protection alone cannot address landscapes already altered. Restoration must complement conservation. Asked about targets for 2030 or 2040, Schepers avoids numbers.
Rewilding, he suggests, is not a campaign but a transition. In the Carpathians, that means:
- A self-sustaining, genetically healthy bison population
- Expanding ecological corridors
- Growing nature-based local economies
- Increasing climate resilience through restored processes
But beyond metrics lies something subtler. Rewilding reframes Europe’s relationship with nature.
“It shifts the narrative from loss to possibility. From managing decline to enabling recovery, and from anxiety to empowerment” Schepers says.
Fact box: Gregg Carr
Gregory C. Carr is an American entrepreneur, investor and philanthropist.
Carr built his career in the telecommunications and internet industries during the 1980s and 1990s, founding several companies before turning his attention to philanthropy.
Through the Carr Foundation, he launched a long-term partnership with the Government of Mozambique in 2004 to restore Gorongosa after the country’s civil war.
His conservation philosophy centers on integrating biodiversity restoration with economic development, public health and education.
This approach evolved into the concept of community-based capitalism, which seeks to align conservation with local economic opportunity.
Today Carr continues to guide the Gorongosa Restoration Project, widely regarded as one of the most ambitious ecosystem restoration efforts in the world.
