Walking Europe's Last Wilderness - A Journey Through the Carpathian Mountains

An evocative voyage through the Carpathian mountain range and its threatened landscape, peoples, and historyThe Carpathian Mountains of Poland, Slovakia, Romania, and Ukraine are Europe's last true wilderness. A landscape of great spruce and beech forests, grass meadows, and ancient villages, its people contend daily with the elements-as well as Europe's last large carnivores. But this fragile ecosystem is now under threat, from climate change and illegal logging.Journeying from the banks of the Danube to Transylvania, Nick Thorpe guides us through the history and ecology of the watershed of Europe, between the Black Sea and the Baltic. For a thousand years the Carpathians have been a place of refuge, of identity and belonging, where powerful rulers and dynasties fought to gain control over rich gold seams and the unruly inhabitants of strategic valleys. Today, its inhabitants struggle to protect its vast forest habitat from urban sprawl as well as logging.Drawing on interviews with shepherds, foresters and loggers, and his four decades of experience in the region, Thorpe sheds light on a neglected part of Europe-where bears, wolves, chamois, and lynxes still roam.

Product details

• Authors: Nick Thorpe
• Publisher: Yale University Press Ltd
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 04.03.2025
• EAN: 9780300253542
• ISBN: 978-0-300-25354-2
• No. of pages: 400
• Dimensions: 160 mm x 240 mm x 35 mm
• Subjects: Guides > Nature; Humanities, art, music > History > General, dictionaries; Non-fiction book > Nature, technology > Nature: general, reference works; Travel > Travelogues, traveller's tales > Europe; HISTORY / Europe / Eastern, NATURE / Ecosystems & Habitats / Mountains, NATURE / Ecosystems & Habitats / Forests & Rainforests, Nature and the natural world: general interest, Earth Sciences, Carpathian Mountains, Mountains and uplands