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Italy, France and Spain has everything you would want in terms of geography...
You have mountains, valleys, volcanos in Italy,
Spain has a more arid mountain landscape and some great beaches.
France has lush green scenery plus the Pyrenees, alps and the mediterranean coast
Sure, except for
tropical/subtropical:
flooded grasslands and savannas
coniferous forests
dry broadleaf forests
grasslands, savannas and shrublands
moist broadleaf forests
temperate:
grasslands, savannas and shrublands
dry:
deserts and xeric shrublands
polar/montane:
boreal forest/taiga
montane grasslands and shrublands
rock and ice
tundra
So if 3 out of 14 land biomes is everything you would want, then sure.
The Carpathians are one of the wildest environments on earth, a wilderness thriving with life, covered in intact ecosystems and with a very rich fauna.
Yeah sure, according to that map there are intact environments in the heart of France (if somehow they are not some erratic pixels) and not in Romania. Get YOUR facts from some better documented, preferably textual source and not from a small map of very bad quality. Romania is the only country from the temperate, non-boreal Europe that has large intact (unmodified) natural areas. And the rest of temperate and all the southern Europe has none, including France.
Nevertheless those data are partial, in Romania they count only the large contiguous area from southwest (extending in the Retezat, Țarcu, Godeanu, Cerna ranges) but smaller areas are spread all over Carpathians. There are literaly hundreds of virgin forests in Romania beside the area of Retezat and surroundings. You can see them located on Google Maps on this website: Paduri Virgine
And anyway, it doesn't have to be entirely unmodified for a natural landscape or ecosystem to be valuable. The value of Romanian ecosystems stems from the quality of biological - geological - hydrological complexes, most of which have been influenced or modified by humans, yet they are superior to some intact ecosystems by the high density of species, fertility of soil, quality of water or combination between very rugged relief and dense and diverse vegetation. For example, the pastures of Transylvanian Plateau (an area of low hills extending on around a third of the province, or more), created by deforestation in high middle age, are of great biological and peisagistic value. In the movie Wild Carpathia (first episode if I remember correctly), at some point they say in Transylvania on a single sq. m can be found up to 60 different species of flowering plants, while in the rest of Europe the density is below 10. Here is another movie about this:
Last edited by CARPATHIAN; 10-14-2015 at 08:11 PM..
Yeah sure, according to that map there are intact environments in the heart of France (if somehow they are not some erratic pixels) and not in Romania. Get YOUR facts from some better documented, preferably textual source and not from a small map of very bad quality. Romania is the only country from the temperate, non-boreal Europe that has large intact (unmodified) natural areas. And the rest of temperate and all the southern Europe has none, including France.
Nevertheless those data are partial, in Romania they count only the large contiguous area from southwest (extending in the Retezat, Țarcu, Godeanu, Cerna ranges) but smaller areas are spread all over Carpathians. There are literaly hundreds of virgin forests in Romania beside the area of Retezat and surroundings. You can see them located on Google Maps on this website: Paduri Virgine
And anyway, it doesn't have to be entirely unmodified for a natural landscape or ecosystem to be valuable. The value of Romanian ecosystems stems from the quality of biological - geological - hydrological complexes, most of which have been influenced or modified by humans, yet they are superior to some intact ecosystems by the high density of species, fertility of soil, quality of water or combination between very rugged relief and dense and diverse vegetation. For example, the pastures of Transylvanian Plateau (an area of low hills extending on around a third of the province, or more), created by deforestation in high middle age, are of great biological and peisagistic value. In the movie Wild Carpathia (first episode if I remember correctly), at some point they say in Transylvania on a single sq. m can be found up to 60 different species of flowering plants, while in the rest of Europe the density is below 10. Here is another movie about this:
This is about as well documented as it gets in this field.
Modified landscapes are not wild, I don't care how they are modified or if you like them or not. That isn't relevant.
You said "The Carpathians are one of the wildest environments on earth, a wilderness thriving with life, covered in intact ecosystems and with a very rich fauna." and this is very inaccurate. I have no desire to debate with you how modifying nature ecosystems makes them better. If you had said that there are areas of Romania that are some of the wildest areas in Europe I would probably let you get away with saying that, although areas of Scandinavia and Russia are more wild, but not the world.
Here is a map of human footprint index: http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/img/news/2009/humanfootprint.gif
As you can see, most of Europe, including Romania, constitutes some of the least wild areas of the world.
This is about as well documented as it gets in this field.
Last of the Wild (LW), from your link, and Intact Forest Landscape (IFL), from my link, are similar initiatives. IFL refers only to forested areas while LW to any kind of unmodified areas.
Now, LW, which you support, was a smaller initiative, as you can read from their wikipedia page or their own website. Their survey was made by some rather theoretical investigations and was made only once in 2002, without being followed by updates:
Last of the Wild is an initiative created in 2002 on behalf of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and the Center for International Earth Science Information Network (CIESIN) at Columbia University to identify the last remaining 'wild' areas on the earth's land surface, measured by human influence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_of_the_Wild
2002 1. This was a one-off scientific process which is not currently being updated. Last of the Wild definition
In the same time, the IFL is an intiative developed by GreenPeace, a project involving a larger array of organisations. They monitorized the natural areas of the planet for 13 years and the maps with the results are periodically updated, last time in 2014:
The first global IFL map was prepared in 2005-2006 under the leadership of Greenpeace, with contributions from: Biodiversity Conservation Center, International Socio-Ecological Union, and Transparent World (Russia), Luonto Liitto (Finnish Nature League), Forest Watch Indonesia, and Global Forest Watch, a network initiated by the World Resources Institute.
...
The global IFL map update was performed in 2014 by Greenpeace, The University of Maryland and Transparent World, with support from the World Resources Institute and WWF Russia. Intact Forest Landscapes
So the data from my previous post is far more reliable and complete, being the work of a larger network of organisations and being continuously updated.
Quote:
Modified landscapes are not wild, I don't care how they are modified or if you like them or not. That isn't relevant.
They are not visibly modified, they look exactly like an intact landscape. In 19th - early 20th century most of the Romanian Carpathians may still been covered by old growth forests and they started to be logged but the cleared crops were planted back immediately so the species diversity and geological - biological complexes survived.
I visited some untouched national parks from Canada, and they were bull compared to what we have here everywhere so being completely untouched will not always offer the greatest experience. The environment of Europe is generally more fertile and healthy than the one in North America and Romania is the best part of Europe in respect of quality of waters, soil, air, vegetation. For example, Romania has 60% of mineral water resources in Europe and many other interesting facts (biggest gold ore deposits on continent and fifth in the world, biggest salt deposits etc).
Quote:
You said "The Carpathians are one of the wildest environments on earth, a wilderness thriving with life, covered in intact ecosystems and with a very rich fauna." and this is very inaccurate. I have no desire to debate with you how modifying nature ecosystems makes them better.
What is inaccurate? That they thrive with life? Do you know that Romania has around 5,000 bears, which is more than in most of Europe (without Russia) together? There are villages which are attacked by bears every night and a local politician called for the army to help control bear population. Ofcourse he made it to gain some votes but this speaks about the desperate state of mind in the rural areas he represents, state of mind caused by the ubiquity of the wild animals.
Or is incorrect what I said that is covered in intact ecosystems? Such ecosystems are found everywhere in Romania, even if not as large contiguous areas.
And I must repeat the mentioning of an aspect that makes the Romanian Carpathians unique on the planet. Search earth's map from side to side, scroll the Google Maps as close or far you want, and you won't find anywhere something like here: a circular range of mountains extending on hundreds of km. I'm not a geologist to understand how such a gigantic arc has formed, is pretty much a mistery for me (Transylvania, the province the Carpathians surround completely, covers around 100,000 sq.km) but I understand that this was one of the two main factors for the unique diversity and health of the habitats. The other is the high fertility of soil, the main Chernozem Belt (richest soil on planet) passing through southern Romania. You can understand the effects of this isolationist geographical organisation by comparing with another, internationally known case (of much smaller physical size): the edge of the Ngorongoro crater which has constituted a protective barrier against outside influences, generating an "interior world" characterised by great biodiversity.
Also, this unique geographical organisation influenced the anthropic, cultural evolutions of the area in a similar manner it influenced the natural evolutions. In the same way the Himalayas have protected India from invasions and had lead to its isolated evolution, resulting in an unique complex of cultures of extreme diversity, the isolating belt of Carpathians has lead to the greatest cultural (ethnic, religious, ethnographic) diversity in Europe. This happened by that the rough relief and impenetrable vegetation have impeded the movement and communication even between neighbour valleys. For that reason, each smaller zone developed as a world of itself. Each of these zones, smaller than a county, often coresponding to a depression, are called "țări", which means "countries". They are specific especially for Transylvania but are found also in the extracarpathic territories.
Quote:
If you had said that there are areas of Romania that are some of the wildest areas in Europe I would probably let you get away with saying that, although areas of Scandinavia and Russia are more wild, but not the world.
I understand your prejudices. But are you having a clear and comprehensive understanding about how these mountains are? Have you hiked in the Carpathians? If not, I reccomend you to watch the best resource of images on internet, a thread created by me on Skyscrapercity forum. On this thread you can find images in high resolution (1600 pixels), maps and descriptions of many of the Romanian natural areas, as well as of unknown villages and cultural monuments, together with images of known objectives:
Last of the Wild (LW), from your link, and Intact Forest Landscape (IFL), from my link, are similar initiatives. IFL refers only to forested areas while LW to any kind of unmodified areas.
Now, LW, which you support, was a smaller initiative, as you can read from their wikipedia page or their own website. Their survey was made by some rather theoretical investigations and was made only once in 2002, without being followed by updates:
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1) IFL isn't as relevant to Last of the Wild because it only considers forests.
1) IFL isn't as relevant to Last of the Wild because it only considers forests.
Relevant for what?
Quote:
2) There are nearly no IFLs in Romania.
There is one, though in process of degradation.
Quote:
3) So using your own criteria, Romania is not one of wildest environments on Earth, not even close.
The word wild, in most used sense, doesn't overlap with the sense of the word "unmodified", as you think. A garden invaded by vegetation is usually called wild (you must have heard of the Savage Garden band ). I used the term "wildest" thinking at the mountain environment characterised by very rugged relief and lush vegetation, amking its hiking dangerous.
tropical/subtropical:
flooded grasslands and savannas
coniferous forests
dry broadleaf forests
grasslands, savannas and shrublands
moist broadleaf forests
temperate:
grasslands, savannas and shrublands
dry:
deserts and xeric shrublands
polar/montane:
boreal forest/taiga
montane grasslands and shrublands
rock and ice
tundra
So if 3 out of 14 land biomes is everything you would want, then sure.
In my personal opinion the countries i mentioned offers a great variety of landscape within Europe. Sure you can't compere to the US and other countries. For me, what i find scenic are: mountains, lakes, volcanos, valleys, forest and ocean. And those countries hit the nail right on the head
The word wild, in most used sense, doesn't overlap with the sense of the word "unmodified", as you think. A garden invaded by vegetation is usually called wild (you must have heard of the Savage Garden band ). I used the term "wildest" thinking at the mountain environment characterised by very rugged relief and lush vegetation, amking its hiking dangerous.
"Wilderness or wildland is a natural environment on Earth that has not been significantly modified by civilized human activity. It may also be defined as: "The most intact, undisturbed wild natural areas left on our planet—those last truly wild places that humans do not control and have not developed with roads, pipelines or other industrial infrastructure."" -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilderness
"Wilderness or wildland is a natural environment on Earth that has not been significantly modified by civilized human activity. It may also be defined as: "The most intact, undisturbed wild natural areas left on our planet—those last truly wild places that humans do not control and have not developed with roads, pipelines or other industrial infrastructure."" -https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilderness
I used the term "wildest environment", not "wilderness". Wild / wildest can be used to non-natural, anthropic subjects. Cat Stevens doesn't sing about ecosystems in "Wild world".
But in the case of Romanian Mountains, on most of their extend there are no apparent signs of human influence. Check out this video with the Defile of Jiu River, crossing a 33 km section of Southern Carpathians. Along the tortuous course there is a road and railway, the second going more throught tunnels than in daylight. Beside the road and the railway, the landscape is intact (in this case the forests too are prehistorical, never cut):
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http://www.geog.ucsb.edu/img/news/2009/humanfootprint.gif
). I used the term "wildest" thinking at the mountain environment characterised by very rugged relief and lush vegetation, amking its hiking dangerous.
