Abstract ID: 3.13505 | Accepted as Talk | Requested as: Talk | TBA | TBA

Diverse relationship and connectedness between human communities and wild animals in cultural landscapes changed significantly in Europe, especially after World War II. Simplification of the interactions between local farmers and wild animals has been a general phenomenon, affecting the perception of and attitude toward wild animal species. Ethnozoological research is designed to investigate changes in these relationships globally. We studied a rural community in Gyimes, Eastern Carpathians, Romania. The community’s livelihood is based on extensive farming and grassland management in a High Nature Value cultural landscape characterized by species-rich mountain hay meadows and a secondary, but very diverse mountain fauna. The community, called Csángó (Ceangăi), also preserved many archaic cultural features. Our study aimed to document the vanishing traditional ecological knowledge of and changing attitudes toward wild animals, both invertebrates and vertebrate species. We conducted 41 free-listing and 102 semi-structured interviews with 76 participants, and we have placed great emphasis on participatory observation, being in the landscape with the locals to experience the manifestations of the relationship between humans and wild animals. We documented the traditional ecological knowledge of 129 invertebrate and 109 vertebrate folk taxa. Local farmers had a diverse relationship with wild animals, characterized by all shades of attitude from extreme negative to extreme positive, defined mainly by cultural and economic drivers. However, this diversity is changing significantly. We found that the generation born between the 1920s and 1930s was the last to preserve a more or less complete triangle of ecological knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes related to wild animals. The different uses of invertebrates and vertebrates in veterinary and human medicine, weather prediction, or different beliefs related to especially amphibians and reptiles are disappearing. Meanwhile, television and educational films are the main mediums for communicating new knowledge, shaping the human-wildlife relationship. We documented a profoundly changing relationship with and attitude toward wild animals in a typical rural community in East-Central Europe. The simplification of the relationship has many far-reaching consequences for the everyday life of the community and nature conservation as well.