Bears are nightly visitors to the towns and villages lying in the Carpathian foothills. Brasov is one of them: every night the bears come out of the woods to picnic at the rubbish bins in a district of blocks of flats on the edge of the forest.

They are just a taste of the thriving wildlife of the Romanian Carpathians, a vast area of 39,000 square miles and one of the last intact corners of nature in Europe.

The Transylvanian virgin forests shelter hundreds of species of plants, trees, insects, birds and animals.

The shepherds that spend seven months a year on the green pastures of the Carpathian summits train their dogs to fight the beasts if necessary. And villagers are used to losing the odd pet or domesticated herbivore to wolves and bears.

People have lived close to these predators for hundreds of years. But experts warn that rapid development, spurred by the prospect of joining the European Union, could carve up one of the continent's few remaining wildernesses and endanger its animal life.

Listen to the programme
	Listen to the programme

First broadcast in June 2004. Produced by Anca Toader of the BBC's Romanian Service.