Group buys up large tracts of land in Romania to create 'European Yellowstone' | Hacker News Reader

Group buys up large tracts of land in Romania to create 'European Yellowstone'

english.elpais.com

283 pointsgeox224 comments

>Several years ago, 80 bison were reintroduced two centuries after their disappearance from these territories...

I had no idea there were bison in Europe.

The provided hyperlink leads to an article about bison being reintroduced in Mexico. Here is an appropriate article about bison being rewilded in the Southern Carpathians:

https://rewildingeurope.com/blog/free-roaming-bison-populati....

Romanian postage stamp from 2001: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/05/Romania_...

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/06/23/first-impressi...

Also check out Herzog's 2010 documentary "Cave of Forgotten Dreams"

The nonstop gibberish about "AI" bores me to tears. These paintings suggest a different view of what it means to become "conscious".

http://www.tcnj.edu/~library/e-reserve/shestakow/SHESHAAH105...

Cave of Forgotten Dreams really moved me. I know part of it is Herzog's narration but it was something about the age of the drawings and thinking of the people creating them as either decoration or maybe storytelling.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8226463/

"Bison" is an European word (with several variants like "Wisent"), so it makes sense that originally it was the name of an European animal. It became applied to the American bison when the American colonists have encountered an animal similar to the one known by them in Europe.

The European bison is a distinct species from the American bison. In the more distant past bisons were widespread all over the Northern Eurasia and Northern America. They have been preferentially hunted everywhere, so their populations have dwindled and fragmented, becoming isolated, then they have become differentiated.

The European bison is somewhat smaller (because it had been mainly a forest animal) and it had become completely extinct in the wild a century ago.

Fortunately, there were enough captive, which have been bred and then reintroduced in the wild in some of their former territories, e.g. in Poland and Romania.

I’ve read about them after getting introduced to: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Żubrówka

I am of the firm belief that this drink, mixed with apple juice, should be marked as Unesco world heritage already.

I never tried that combination (I also drink very rarely), but it sounds interesting .. and I do like the bison grass vodka on its own.

Yeah, it is quite good ..

Apple Pie Vodka is the best... so many hangovers!

There is bison in Chernobyl: https://www.rferl.org/a/bison-chernobyl/28357813.html

There is almost every EurAsian animal in Chernobyl. Once humans fucked off, animals took over.

The real lesson is that humans don't need to fuck off for this to happen, we just need to stop intervening so much in nature. People honestly can't seem to handle sitting idle, we run around doing as much stuff as we can because we don't know what "enough" means.

This happened very quickly during the early panny-D as well

There is also the beer https://zubr.cz/cs

And probably unrelated polish beer zubr.pl

Prehistoric European cave paintings should make that obvious.

Yes, there are some of them in various european countries.

https://www.eurowildlife.org/news/wisents-in-slovakia-the-po...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_bison

It would be interesting to compare population density of europe vs the rest of the world over history.

I have imagined that europe was always heavily populated, while north america was sparsely populated (allowing endless bison). Might not be that true, maybe europe wasn't that dense, and also disease killed so many when the first europeans arrived.

Contact with Europeans spread new diseases that killed off the vast majority of the Native American population. So it's likely Europe was more populated but not to the degree that settlers found here -- they were moving into a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

> I have imagined ... north america was sparsely populated (allowing endless bison)

The "endless bison" in America was actually only during a relatively short period of time. IIRC there was a gap of almost a century between when the Native American population was decimated due to disease, and when settlers of European ancestry headed out west.

During that gap the bison population exploded.

The US used to have many competitors to the bison. Many different kind of larger bison. Different types of horses. Giant sloths and so on.

The European Northern plane just turned more into forest rather then remaining more open.

The book 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created goes into a lot of detail about this.

>I had no idea there were bison in Europe.

I've been on nodding terms with these guys for some years:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaur

It's another species, wisent, zubr, zimbru:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_bison

Of particular note is that there are a ton of bears in Romania, much more than in other European countries, with something like 60% of all European brown bears. [0] Glad to see that someone is attempting to preserve this.

0. https://www.mossy.earth/rewilding-knowledge/romanias-brown-b...

> much more than in other European countries, with something like 60% of all European brown bears.

There are about 5000 (even it it were 10,000) in Romania, which is way less than 50% of the european population. https://www.euronatur.org/en/what-we-do/bear-wolf-lynx/bears...

I don't see any numbers in the link you provided.

Edit: I looked again and I think you're referring to the image. It looks like the link I referenced was excluding Russia. Romania does seem to have 60% of bears everywhere in Europe west of Russia and parts of Finland and Estonia.

Romania has about 5000, Slovakia and Ukraine about 2000 about 4000 from Ex-Yugoslavia to Greece and 2500 in Scandinavia. So, still way less than 50%.

I think the confusion might be because the Carpathian zone includes Romania, Slovakia, and Ukraine, and the site I linked to is using that number solely for Romania.

In any case, it's not my website and the general point remains that the specific region has a big percentage of European bears.

I didn't want to critisize you, just to get the numbers straight. I'm actually living in one of the regions with many bears (the northern end of the lower tatras) in Slovakia.

There are more bears than the land can sustain. Go to any tourist (or non tourist) spot in the mountains and they'll come down and steal from your garbage in town.

Look up Brasov. It's a reasonably large touristic town and it regularly gets bears at the periphery.

Bears are common in western US mountain towns. The solution is being careful with garbage, including use of bear-proof containers.

I'm not sure this is a sign of "too many" so much as that the bear population is healthy, meaning it's up against the carrying capacity, as a healthy population should be.

My mom lived in Paradise, CA. There was at least one black bear who roamed the neighborhood because it took a dump in the middle of her lawn to proclaim ownership of their land. According to neighbors, it didn't get into garbage containers there. There were red foxes, opossum, deer, and corvids to do that.

In parts of rural, wooded America, you don't venture outside in situations where you could surprise a large animal without some sort of stabby weapon or firearm if you value your life (if they decide to charge) and that of critters (to try to scare them off).

The land can sustain them fine, that's just what it's like to live near bears. Tons of places are like that - you get used to it lol don't worry. There was a Tom Scott video on work folks are doing to develop bear resistant trash cans and the like: https://youtu.be/Xn_O2li_jpk?si=BUPxDOxXaOJdxC_v

It's funny (and sad) that wildlife has been so thoroughly decimated in parts of the world that people are so shocked by such thoroughly mundane things but it's an important reminder that ecological restoration work must involve working with locals and understanding the cultural forces at play to make these projects a success. Including making sure that externalities are accounted for and that the people in the area share in the benefits (economic like tourism, cultural like restoration of culturally significant animals and ecosystems, environmental depending on the intrinsic value people give to preserving the environment, etc). I'm seeing it in the replies to this thread - it's easy for folks in places like the American West to be dismissive of concerns like these but the idea that the wild is worth preserving is frankly a relatively recent one. If you just assume that obviously everyone values bears being alive while the other person just assumes that everyone values eliminating or at least suppressing bear populations to never have to deal with them everyone is just going to walk away assuming the other person is crazy

> the idea that the wild is worth preserving is frankly a relatively recent one

not entirely inaccurate, but an important distinction. People who had pre-industrial cultures (and probably some relationship to wild places) were systematically conquered and their lands taken, by militarized industrial civilizations.. this happened at various times in various places in the last 500 years. There are no places of note left that have not been treated this way.

So a preservation relationship to wild places among the civilizations established by military conquer, is relatively new.. agree

Good point. The core of what i'm trying to get at with that statement is - in many of the regions where ecological restoration is a topic of conversation, stakeholders with power over restoration would only recently have begun to interact with the idea of ecological restoration being valuable in a way they have to take seriously (people have been fighting for the environment forever, but people with power to influence that caring about it is going to be novel), and are often coming from a perspective where the opposite, the exploitation of the environment as a desirable goal for mankind, has been mainstream for a long time.

I live in a regular town in Connecticut and I have bears attack my garbage regularly, so I'm not convinced that's all that weird.

Unfortunately, Romanian bears are brown bears (Ursus arctos), not black (Ursus americanus). They are not easily scared by people and encounters with them can be very dangerous.

I understand the difference, but if you find yourself inadvertently getting between a black bear and her cubs, I think you'll find they can be very dangerous, also.

Unlike the other commenters, I do agree that IS different. The black bears here are not on the same level as a grizzly or kodiak or other brown bear. The ones here ARE becoming a bit more aggressive for unknown reasons, though.

I don't think there's a much difference in behavior between the species, probably Romania just has more bears living close to humans, which makes them less afraid and conflicts more likely. For the record, my home country (Finland) has about 2000 brown bears, and they have killed only a single person during past 100 years. Most of the time they try their best to avoid humans, and the majority of people living in the countryside have never even seen one.

Eurasian brown bears and North American brown bears are ostensibly the same species of bear, but you'd never guess it from the attack statistics. Eurasian brown bears are considerably less likely to attack than their North American counterparts. I think the Eurasian brown bears have been subjected to more evolutionary pressure to be more docile (from people hunting down the aggressive ones more comprehensively and probably for longer than in America.)

Romania has more than 2 persons killed each year and many more injured.

"Between 2016 and 2021, there were 154 bear attacks on humans, resulting in 158 injuries and 14 deaths"

https://www.politico.eu/article/romania-bear-attacks-on-huma...

Just for comparison, how many persons are killed by humans each year?

There you have it! Romanian people taste much better than Finish!

>Romania has more than 2 persons killed each year and many more injured.

Statistics can be misleading without context. Especially when you see dumbfucks in Romania film themselves pulling over and get out of their cars so they can get close to bears to feed them biscuits and pet them as if they're stray cats/dogs. How can you blame the bears then? At that point such deaths are just natural selection at work.

At least in the past when we were cavemen, some member of the tribe would get mauled by a wild animal and the rest of the tribe would take note not to fuck around with those animals and pass that knowledge to their offspring, but somewhere along the way, we seem to have lost commons sense and personal responsibility and if some idiot engages with a wild animal and gets killed it's now the animal's fault for being "dangerous" and not his fault for being a dumbass who's now been thankfully erased from the gene pool.

"At least in the past when we were cavemen, some member of the tribe would get mauled by a wild animal and the rest of the tribe would take note not to fuck around with those animals"

Yes they learned, but also most tribes would have taken pride in hunting that animal down. At least that was (and is) the case with indigenous tribes where we have detail knowldege. So the animals learned to stay away from the humans (to some extent).

But yes, we advanced a little bit, so we do have other options. The finns seem to do way better in this regard, than rumania. About the reasons why they do better, I lack detail knowledge.

"Especially when you see dumbfucks in Romania film themselves pulling over and get out of their cars so they can get close to bears to feed them biscuits and pet them as if they're stray cats/dogs"

But if this behavior is widespread, then yeah, this would be certainly a reason. And stray dogs can be quite dangerous as well btw.

I bet that a fair quote of them were hunting bears

I don't know much about the particular situation, but isn't it likely that is just caused from human settlements expanding?

And habitat destruction. Romania _had_ a lot of forests.

Speaking of bears, a bunch of libertarians took over Grafton NH, and the bears won.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-...

Are you sure it's the bears that are invading or is it the monkeys with their stick technology?

A bear stealing human food in no way shape or form suggests that there's not enough food for them in the wild. Stealing human food is just generally easier and tastier.

> they'll come down and steal from your garbage in town

You mean their home? Bears were there before humans settled and built towns.

IMHO can't really complain about bears wehen you're the on encroaching on their turf, not the other way around.

I never understand these arguments.

You mean mastodon home,surely? They were there before bears! How about pterodactyl?

How far do we go / where do we arbitrarily draw the line?

I am all for ecology, preservation, being in sync with nature etc, but I find fundamentally flawed and dishonest arguments like these don't contribute to the cause. Over billions of years, every single species alive displaced some other species, multiple times over.

I think he's just saying that if you move in somewhere where there were lots of bears.... don't be surprised when bears show up and are annoying.

The "surprise“ comes from the fact this was historically a solved problem. People simply killed the annoying predators and nuisance animals.

We are in a transition state of cultural values and expectations. People expect to being free from annoyances because that was the norm for hundreds if not thousands of years. The rules have changed around how we treat animals, but people have not internalized all the resulting impacts.

For what it is worth, there are still lots of places, even in the US, where the old solution is still in effect.

Historically there were much less humans, and more wilderness for animals. Applying the historical solutions in modern day would mean extinction of species in many places.

That may be true for some species, and not others. However, I was not attempting an appeal to history, just providing explanation. After all, historically, most people did not care about the extinction of many species, or even thought their eradication was a benefit.

This. I just said humans should not complain about bear issues when they settle in bear territory. Don't know why others need to get their knickers in a twist.

The point of this argument is to compare humans with animals they replaced, not animals with other animals, because the assumption is that we, as humans, are ethically capable of engaging with this kind of question in the first place. I don't think anyone is arguing that "the land belongs to the bears and no one else."

> Over billions of years, every single species alive displaced some other species, multiple times over.

I can mostly agree with the rest of your points. But how many species are killing off thousands of other species in such a short time frame?

And that's absolutely an argument I will support! and very much do care about.

It's just a fundamentally different argument to "Well clearly, arbitrary species A here at some arbitrary time B is the natural and morally right owner of these lands".

Were bears completely extinct in the area and reintroduced from elsewhere? If not, there's no arbitrary line being drawn whatsoever. It's currently bear habitat.

As long as this is not seen as justification to displace any other species just when we feel like it (because they probably displaced some other species), I can agree.

> "Well clearly, arbitrary species A here at some arbitrary time B is the natural and morally right owner of these lands".

Which is not what the person you replied to said. I read it as "bears were there first, don't be surprised when you move there and find bears".

While I’d probably vote to shoo the bears, I don’t think the argument is particularly hard to understand.

Like the folks who build their house at the bottom of a flood plain or fire area and then demand help for ensuing disaster.

> where do we arbitrarily draw the line?

clearly, a line is if both species are alive at the same time and competing for resources. we don't have do be moronic/sophomoric about the discourse.

Call me pessimist but (emphasis mine):

> We can only buy from private property, but not from municipalities or landowners’ associations, so our strategy is to acquire what we can and donate it to the state *only if it creates a national park*

So foreign "donors" are buying land that they gonna keep if local government doesn't do what they want.

There’s a bit of a trend of foreign meddling trying to preserve Carpathian landscapes - King Charles III of Great Britain has been at it too: https://www.rferl.org/a/romania-king-charles-trees-transylva...

Powerful aristocrats and mysterious patrons buying up parts of Transylvania to ensure the preservation of the old ways? Sounds like the background to a Dan Brown novel…

I randomly know some people who did research on the relationships between the stakeholders that are involved here. See:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08941920.2021.1...

I find the whole thing facinating.

Have you ever seen the movie Cold Mountain? The story was set in the Appalachians, but the movie was filmed in the mountains of Romania. Beautiful.

I don't think the Carpathians look much like Appalachia - I'll have to check the film out and see.

The more the better, but there's already a "European Yellowstone" in the form of Belovezhskaya Pushcha National Park in Belarus, of similar size, home to many of the remaining European buffalo.

I'm guessing you mean the bison. (At least that's what Belovezhskaya Pushcha is known for, other than being the largest area of primeval forest in Europe.)

Calling bison ‘buffalo’ is a North American thing, generally. It’s part of a huge pattern of naming confusions between British and American English for ungulates. An elk in Eurasia traditionally means what is a called a moose in North America, but in North America what they call an elk is more similar to a European red deer. America also calls its pronghorn (which is not an antelope) an antelope, and its reindeer caribou, unless they’re pulling Santa’s sleigh. Muskoxen also aren’t oxen.

But the bighorn sheep is really a sheep and it does have big horns, so they have that going for them.

Not just English.

The Dutch word for Alces alces (the animal called a moose in North America and an elk in Europe) is "eland".

Dutch settlers in South Africa decided to use that word for the large antelope of the genus Taurotragus, which is still called an eland in English.

Modern Dutch distinguishes the two by calling the antelope an "eland antelope", while Afrikaans calls the moose/elk an "American/European eland".

Yeah, but I'm an ex-Brit, so that's not really a good excuse :)

My wife's Belarusian though, and I have been to Belovezhskaya Pushcha and seen these buffalo/bison beasties, so I've got that going for me!

Buffalo and Bison are often interchangeable in American English.

I know in Polish, "żubr", which is the European Bison, is often translated as buffalo and the American Bison is known as "bizon" which is understandably translated as bison. I would not be surprised if Belarusian was similar.

In Belarusian it's indeed "амерыканскі бізон" and "еўрапейскі зубр" (American bison and European zubr). In everyday speech these are shortened to "bison" and "zubr".

And buffalo (like African and water) is "буйвал".

I had no idea American English used "buffalo" and "bison" interchangeably.

Learn something every day. :)

Correct. Buffalo and wisent are both bison.

> Buffalo and wisent are both bison.

There are also buffalo that are not bison, like the domestic water buffalo.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_buffalo

Transylvania is absolutely stunning. There's a trek called the Via Transilvanica that's on my bucket list: https://youtu.be/5gpbns_jqRY?si=TxGZXN6rCH2IQOoM

This really sounds too good to be true. I understand why the locals are sceptic at first. If they achieve their goal of creating a national park with 200.000 square hectares they have covered 3% of the Romanian forests. That is impressive.

I have only been to Iceland (jan 2023..first time out of the US and loved it's culture & many things about it) then in May 2023 visited Yellowstone. Iceland has a lot of natural wonders but Yellowstone has more varied natural wonders and all in a smaller area.

I'd personally recommend Yellowstone over Iceland if your looking to experience the best/most unique natural wonders (grand canyon, tons of waterfalls, a massive geyser Old Faithful compared to Stokkur, wildlife safari, hot and colorful out of this world scolding hot pools and more). I do need to do the ring road in Iceland, but Iceland surely does not have wildlife nor colorful hot pools (that i know of anyway).

Maybe they can create one without all the traffic.

Just go to any other part of the park; though the other parts are not as "interesting".

Visit the Zone of Death! Almost completely empty! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_of_Death_(Yellowstone)

The Zone of Death isn't quite a classic "HN tries to compile the law" topic, lawyers have tried to have the boundaries rewritten after all.

But what would happen if/when a felony is committed in the Zone of Death is fairly clear. A local judge would rule that "State and district" needs to be interpreted in the intention of the legislature, and can only be "State or district" when those differ, since "neither State nor district" isn't going to lead to a "fair and speedy trial".

But this opens a wedge for appeal on procedural grounds, which any defense lawyer would be duty-bound to take, and the whole thing would end up in front of the Supreme Court. Which is a waste of everyone's time, SCOTUS should be creating meaningful precedent with its limited time, not futzing around with the one spot on the map where the Sixth Amendment is ambiguous.

What wouldn't happen is the perpetrator going scot-free. That's not how it works.

It's a cool name though. Very in keeping with the West in general.

Yeah it always seemed unlikely that “the law does not apply” conclusion makes sense there when judges regularly “nope” less solid procedural arguments out of their courts.

The only case that gets close to it was resolved (in part) by the perpetrator taking a plea deal that included the guarantee that they would NOT petition for redress.

Given how the US legal system works in practice, a plea deal is also the most likely outcome for any other felony. Playing for time isn't really a good idea when that translates to extremely long jail times while waiting for a trial you're not going to win anyway.

This reminds of “Free Fire” by C.J. Box.

One of the novels written to try to get Congress to fix the technical issue.

I buy this for Yosemite but let's be real, if I'm going to Yellowstone I'm taking my toddlers to see the geysers, not on a 20 mile in-and-out hike up a mountain.

Of course - though there are other geysers available (most in Yellowstone, of course): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_geysers

Popular things are popular for reasons, after all.

The best I've found is visit at inconvenient times; early or late in the season, or early in the day.

Was just in Yosemite: the mountains look just as pretty with snow and you can snowshoe from Badger Pass.

I haven't been to Yellowstone so maybe this doesn't make sense, but is there a reason they couldn't implement the same system as Zion? During most of the year the main road in Zion is closed to private cars, and everyone uses the (very good) shuttle system, or bikes or walks.

I live near Yellowstone in Wyoming. The park is a lot more massive than Zion, usually involving multi-hour drives to get around, and there are multiple roads in the park, all of which don't necessarily see the same levels of traffic.

There also tend to not be as many people driving around slowly gawking on the roads themselves (unlike Zion or Yosemite, say), since most of the park doesn't have crazy vista views, it's mainly a high altitude, flat-ish volcanic plateau in the middle. The specific sites along the roads will have the traffic mostly.

Zion (the parts people see, at least), is tiny by comparison.

Also, as a photographer, the shuttle system is pretty awful. It's no longer easily possible to do get out to where you want to be well before dawn.

I did a trip through a bunch of national parks recently, and was thinking why the hell isn't there some sort of organised transit - be it shuttle busses, or trains for the capacity. The amount of space wasted for parking in a nature preserve was crazy, not to mention all the infrastructure for the traffic jams.

Then went to Grand Canyon and Zion and saw they have shuttles which are sometimes exclusive (if the shuttle is operating you cannot take the road), which makes so much more sense, and even allows for more flexibility (you can go on a hike which is out, and not have to walk back the same way but hop on the shuttle bus).

I don't know why it isn't more common, especially when most parks have a relatively short main road/loop that 90% of visitors never leave. Yosemite for example has a great bus system that goes everywhere you need, except that they don't block private cars so the buses constantly get stuck in traffic. I think the exclusive shuttles at Zion are relatively new, so maybe it will spread to more parks in the future.

Zions shuttle system frankly blows. I went last week and had to wait 2 hours in line for it. Meanwhile you go to the kobol canyon area and I did not see a single person all day.

Must vary widely, because I went in August and there was 0 line at all. A lot of places are on Spring Break in the US right now, so that may contribute to your experience.

I think Yellowstone is too big for that compared to places like Zion and Yosemite which have relatively small valleys where people concentrate. I'm not sure shuttles to see Tioga Pass would make sense in the same way they do in the valley.

There is in fact a high country shuttle operating in the Tuolomne Meadows area. It makes four stops per day at Tioga Pass:

https://www.nps.gov/yose/planyourvisit/tmbus.htm

Yellowstone is an animal watching experience... so watch all the humans in their animal-ing.

Say what you like about America but our public lands are worth more than all the crown jewels of Europe.

I could be wrong but I'm guessing nearly every European would agree that their own national parks are also worth more than their crown jewels.

And ironically, both were stolen from the people who owned them.

No one cares.

Isn't this mostly negated by the fact that Romania is a sovereign state? If a group was to buy up enough land that it started to affect the economy of the region, the government could just void out their rights to the land. Or reduce them to only a minimal level.

The Gorongosa project in Mozambique has revitalized Gorongosa National Park while involving local communities.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorongosa_National_Park

Ahh, bollocks (sort of)! Romania...one of the last cool places on earth that isn't full of idiots. Oh well, gotta go find somewhere else again. *packs of dogs can be a pain....especially whilst cycling.

Are you...upset at nature preservation?

No, US-American tourists

As a frequent reader of r/europe, Americans have FAR from the worst reputation for tourists within Europe, it's not even close.

At least among larger countries, they might actually have a better than average rep.

I don't dislike US-Americans. Very far from it.

Most US-Americans that I have encountered (both abroad and stateside) are a lovely bunch, great tippers, and have a distinct happy-go-lucky attitude that is hard to find anywhere else.

The crux: When a place gets popular with a certain tourist demographic (through Instagram, Tiktok, whatever) there is an inflection point where the place / experience starts to become commodified, expensive, and bad.

Similar to an influx of large amounts VC money in that niche community app that you used to love.

> US-Americans

You can just say "Americans". It's a well-recognized demonym, everyone knows what it means, and no one is going to be confused and think you mean someone from one of the many other countries in North or South America.

And it's not some sort of "injustice" that the US "stole" the term American to refer to solely themselves. It's just... not a big deal.

> It's just... not a big deal.

Says the thief? ;)

I like how the first thing you mention liking is Americans giving you extra money.

Why 'me'?

Untrue.

Coming from a tourist nation, the 3 worst traveller's countries are China, Russia and the US. There are statistics in Austria, and the US is not leading at all, rather China has a lead over the other stupidly annoying traveller's.

Behind them are the special cases, like the not-tipping cheap Dutch, the unable-to-drive rich Arabs (car rentals require special insurance rates for them), and the drunken hords of Brits and Swedes invading party towns in the south of Europe.

It would be interesting to see some kind of data on this.

I have a mutual friend that does tours in Europe. This was his and his worker's sentiments as well. Talking with them we thought there may be a lot of self-filtering going on in his situation. He does historical tours and those seem to attract a less rowdy group.

I'd love to see the research behind that. I don't know where Americans rank, but I wouldn't guess we rank high.

From what I've read: American tourists in Latin America fucking suck, but the ones that go to Europe or Japan are largely fine.

Anyway, it's easy to find threads about tourists on r/europe or r/askeurope: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskEurope/comments/6zq6lu/which_for...

Personal experience from travel in Iceland, Peru, UK (mostly Scotland), and Italy. Obviously generalizations and anecdotes, so take with a grain of salt.

Americans often stand out. Look more "touristy" - wearing shorts, goofy bags, unstylish footwear, etc. Most likely to ask "what do you do?" (for a living). Not rude, but can be more boisterous/social than some others.

Chinese - tend to travel in large tour groups. Frequently dressed poorly for conditions (Jimmy Choo shoes while touring Icelandic waterfalls). Disembark from buses and race to get a selfie before the rest of the crowd. Not purposefully rude, but the sheer number/concentration of them makes them stand out.

Europeans are generally don't stand out. Usually dress the least obviously touristy. Usually happy to make chit-chat, but less likely to initiate than US-Americans.

And stupid people come from all backgrounds. While in Iceland, there was an Asian fellow who insisted on sticking his hand into the geysers, despite warning signs in ~8 languages. Same trip, some German teens ran out onto an icy lake, despite signs warning of falling through the ice. And at the big waterfalls, there were people from all races/nationalities jumping fences to get better shots for their Insta feeds.

My personal pet peeve is people who litter or otherwise ruin natural beauty. And again, they come in all shapes, sizes, colors, creeds, etc.

> Americans often stand out. Look more "touristy" - wearing shorts, goofy bags, unstylish footwear, etc.

Interesting. When I travel, I usually dress the same out in public as I do at home (well, modified for the local weather, anyway). Usually that means jeans, t-shirt, and possibly a hoodie and/or jacket if the weather is cooler, with fairly plain sneakers or perhaps a nicer shoe, depending on how much walking I expect to be doing. I tend to not carry a bag with me unless I'm going to or from an airport or train station. If I do need a bag, it'll usually be a backpack or shoulder bag, something I would use at home for a similar purpose.

I do expect that there are a lot of us who inexplicably dress differently when traveling, but I wonder if your assessment of American tourist dress as "goofy" or "unstylish" is just that the styles that are popular over here aren't popular where you live and where you've traveled and seen American tourists.

I really don't get why some people drastically change their wardrobe when traveling, though.

I’m American, from DC metro. Shorts are a big one - far more popular in the US than abroad. Particularly cargo shorts, which are goofy no matter who you are. ;)

Better than who out of curiosity?

The ones that get slammed the most that I've seen are probably the Brits, Russians, and Chinese. Apparently Brits are notorious for getting super drunk and fucking around. Russians are known as being really entitled and rude (and sometimes aggressive IIRC), and there's Chinese tourists also being rude and ignoring rules in huge packs.

The stereotype of American tourists is that they're ignorant and loud (and bad dressers), but also friendly, curious, great tippers (which makes Americans very popular among hospitality workers), and mostly rule-abiding. Though the bad ones are often REALLY bad.

Best reputation is the Japanese. Almost everyone says they're super polite and respectful.

The stereotypes around Russian and Chinese tourists have a lot to do with relative wealth, I think. If you're from Russia or China and you decide to go to Europe (or in the case of Russia more specifically Western Europe) for a vacation, you are likely fairly well-off in your home country even if your relative wealth doesn't necessarily translate to the country you're visting. This comes with a certain sense of entitlement typical of "new money".

The part about Russians being more aggressive (I'd even say more likely to credibly threaten violence) might have to do with the level of corruption in Russia making it more likely for you to get away with even violent crime if you can afford it. At least this would match what Russian ex-pats I've met say about their home country.

I'd say American tourists in Europe are generally relatively well-behaved because they're conscious of how they might be perceived (remember the travel advice to pretend you're Canadian?) but e.g. in Germany they're often known for being noisy, which is generally seen as rude. I've heard a lot of complaints about American tourists "talking too loud" even in regular conversation, and the heavy use and expectation of "social smiling" (i.e. feigning friendliness as courtesy) can be extremely off-putting.

True, and Americans tend to stick to tourist traps, you don't find at many of them at random Slovenian lakes.

A young group of brits abroad can be found anywhere and everywhere

> great tippers

This covers a multitude of sins, because the most likely person to be annoyed by tourists are the workers who interact with them.

Probably british youths on holiday, they are pretty notorious. This demographic of american is just as bad but can only afford to get belligerent domestically in florida or south padre isle during spring break, much less afford a flight to europe.

Exactly, shitty American tourists are staying within America or going to Mexico/nearby Latam countries.

Right, and this is why I believe American tourists (in general) have a much worse reputation in Latin America than in Europe.

I think the Americans with bad reputations tend to stick to tropical climates and beaches. The type of place where tourists are probably just sunning themselves or getting drunk.

Interestingly enough, I recently went on a short trip to Cozumel, MX. It wasn't my choice, I was just going to see some family who had planned their vacation there. I've been to more than 20 countries and boy oh boy was Cozumel my least favorite place abroad. Felt like the whole island was tailor-made to rip off or outright scam tourists arriving via cruise ships.

That is exactly the sentiment that I was trying to convey with my, admittedly a bit controversial, statement above.

Do you get a lot in Romania? I would suspect there's about 15 other more popular countries in Europe for Americans to visit... The UK, Ireland, Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Czechia, Greece, Turkey, Netherlands, etc are all more popular to go to as an American than Romania.

The implication was that a new big national park would attract annoying tourists. (A different poster suggested American, but there are certainly annoying tourists from many places in the world.)

If the US has such awesome national parks (and I believe it) then they don’t have to fly across an ocean to get that Yellowstone experience.

The people are extremely welcome, yet the market forces that come with mass tourism are often very destructive.

I cycled along the Danube (all of it) in 2013.

The packs of wild dogs were not a problem at all. The individual dogs "defending" their property from cyclists were a pain. I had a water bottle and a stick to get rid of the less and the more persistent ones respectively...

I am disappointed they didn't plan to drill for geysers. Geothermal activity is the first thing that comes to mind when I hear "Yellowstone".

I was also confused when I read this. Yellowstone has bears and buffalo, but that's not why it was made a park.

Private money is what kicked off the National Parks system in the US. Glad to see this happening anywhere. I hope it stays in the public trust though.

There are already tons of national parks in Europe, it's not like this is the first one.

Really? I thought it was Terry Roosevelt. Do you have a source?

It was Teddy. Via executive orders.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-theodore-roosevel...

He came way later - it began much earlier: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_National_Park_S...

You have to look at the history of each individual park, some started out as government land and remained such, others were private resort islands, etc.

I suppose it comes down to your definition of kicked off. There were only a few lands protected as national parks before Teddy arrived and protected more land than any other individual has ever done.

But often with the support or lobbying of private interests. Generous souls like Lorrin A. Thurston of Hawaii, who would like you to remember him as the newspaper publishing philanthropist who used his wealth to promote his interest in volcanology and persuade Roosevelt to create the Volcanoes National Park. Which is true - in 1916, the park was established by Woodrow Wilson (helped by Teddy’s endorsement).

But the same kind of private interest taking an interest in the affairs of state has its dark side too: Thurston also was the author of the “bayonet constitution” which undermined the Kingdom of Hawaii's sovereignty, and formed the ‘committee of safety’ which enlisted the US Marines in a coup that overthrew Queen Liliʻuokalani, and installed Sanford Dole (the fruit guy) as and President, and ultimately brought about the annexation of Hawaii.

I don't know the history, but if it's anything like the public libraries here (and several other institutions), a lot of it would have been bankrolled by robber barons trying to secure their legacy and avoid taxation. In other words, guilting rich people and threatening nationalization of their wealth works.

> a lot of it would have been bankrolled by robber barons trying to secure their legacy and avoid taxation.

Do you have a cite for that?

BTW, donating to charity is tax deductible. For example, if I donate $100 to charity, I can deduct $100 from my taxable income.

My choices:

1. paying taxes: I pay $20 2. donating to charity and deducting it from my income: I pay $100

I'm $80 worse off financially by donating to charity rather than paying taxes. As a tax avoidance scheme, donating to charity doesn't deliver.

That's a very naive understanding of how charities work. You don't donate to a charity, you donate to your charity.

Now, obviously your charity still needs to act as a charity so that money can't go back in your pocket but there are plenty of things the charity might spend it on that are in your financial interest and because you founded it, you likely have sufficient influence over it to make that happen even if you don't formally personally make its decisions.

Also, if you donate $100 in stock to a charity, that deducts your taxable income by $100 but it doesn't cost you $100 in income. Arguably a more egregious example for this is high art where you can create and destroy value through auctions (i.e. the value of your donation may be massively inflated compared to what you paid for it).

> there are plenty of things the charity might spend it on that are in your financial interest

How do you think Carnegie's libraries across the country benefited Carnegie financially?

The goodwill he garnered probably shielded him from costly scrutiny of his less savory business practices, for one.

I.e. the presumption of guilt.

No, he was definitely guilty. But if you do good things in recompense, it's easier for people to let it slide. As with modern antitrust, labor rights infringements, etc., it's not so much, "Are they doing it?", as, "Do we care enough to investigate and build a case?". Bankrolling a public good that politicians know need to happen but don't want to go through the political pain of appropriating funds for makes them care less.

Given that the US isn't a perfect capitalist system (i.e. what supports of capitalism often refer to as corporatocracy or crony capitalism) why would you assume that he didn't do the closest thing to illegal that he could get away with if it was most profitable to do so?

That said, the actual reason for his philanthropy seems to be fairly well documented: he did almost all of his philanthropy in the last two decades of his life (i.e. past what we would now call the age of retirement) and he was regarded as a shrewd business man up to that point and is now instead remembered as a generous philanthropist instead. So in other words, it was a very successful PR campaign to establish his personal legacy to survive his physical existence (i.e. "to secure his legacy" as the comment you originally replied to stated).

That said, he was also supportive of the ideas of progressive taxation and an estate tax, so the philanthropy may have simply been an act of last resort to part with his money when the government won't take it away through taxation. In that light it sounds more like his philanthropy aimed to meet the needs the welfare system failed to address. This is very different from the kind of philanthropy most billionaires (or "tycoons") get/got up to who are often very much against being taxed more (sometimes even despite publicly stating the opposite).

I might have overstated how common it was, after a bit of Googling.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/04/09...

https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?art...

Yellowstone National Park - 1872

Sequoia National Park - 1890

Yosemite National Park - 1890

Teddy Roosevelt - president from 1901 - 1909

Roosevelt's Time Machine was well known.

Oh, as in a big park. Not a supervolcano. Fine, then, carry on.

Visiting Romania :) Living in Romania :(

Romanians complain more about their country than people from Africa, Syria or Afganistan. Most pessimistic bunch ever.

Not that life in Romania is excelent, but the Romanians who complain a lot only look at Netherlands, Sweden, Denmark, etc and forget most of the world has it vastly worse than them.

I think you can stop your sentence after the third word. (source: am Romanian)

I have some Romanian colleagues and they're all quite patriotic and often talk about how great Romania is.

That's universal. You don't trash your homeland to foreigners, only to fellow countrymen.

The latter two don't really have the internet to complain about their country though

I'm talking about in-person complaining as I met a lot of people from those countries and none complained as much as Romanians. And assuming those people don't have internet is just silly.

Post communism

Living in Romania is not that bad if you make enough money but living there with the median income is complicated that's why many of us are living abroad.

Quality of life has increased dramatically since the 90s though.

It's noticeably improving, though! Over the last 10 years or so, both their GDP per capita and household income per capita have roughly doubled. Now when I visit medium-sized cities there I am amazed to find latte-slinging coffee shops and craft beer-pouring gastropubs that would look right at home in Brooklyn.

>Now when I visit medium-sized cities there I am amazed to find latte-slinging coffee shops and craft beer-pouring gastropubs that would look right at home in Brooklyn.

True, but that's not an accurate measurement of the quality of life or income of the average Romanian. They're are just businesses serving an afluent urban clientele (mostly corporate/IT workers and other high income people) that's like what 10% of the național population or something but overly represented in much higher proportions in the big cities.

Go to the smaller cities or villages and you'll see a different picture: lots of people with precarious education, unemployed or making minimum wage in dead-end jobs and living paycheck to paycheck unable to afford to fix broken teeth, hospitals and schools falling apart, etc.

The country's still much better to live in (especially in the 5 big cities) than what the average of the planet has to deal with, but there's a reason why statistically it's at the bottom of the EU charts. Tech workers sipping gourmet coffee in the big cities are the exception but don't represent the norm.

I beg to differ

What are the pros and cons?

Pros (imo): Daily essentials not-yet commodified, can access amazing produce for cheap. Geopolitically stable, crime is mostly petty or white collar. Nature.

Cons (imo): no progressive tax rate, effective ~50% tax on income unless you want to do tax evasion (Romanian past-time), very likely to die on the road as public transit is in a state of disrepair, choice of healthcare between expensive and inefficient private sector, or a public sector where you have to bribe your way to not contracting infections while getting treated for something else.

> expensive and inefficient private sector

Interesting, I found the private sector to be better there than in western Europe. Much quicker, easier and cheaper to get a cehck-up, MRI, CT scan, physiotherapy, dentistry, etc.

The public system though, yeah, it's rough.

Cons (imo) definitely outweigh the pros though.

Interesting. I guess the impression that a lot of people have of Romania is that it is riddled with violent crime.

Not having a progressive tax is a feature, not a bug. If a progressive tax would be introduced, I'd either start avoid taxes in any way possible, or I'd seriously think about emigration. Because yes, the rich always finds ways to evade taxes, while the middle class gets screwed. And I'm also not interested in subsidizing the poor.

The total taxes you pay on a regular work contract are around 41.5%, and much of that goes to pensions. Many people in the gig economy, that haven't contributed, will wake up one day to a harsh reality.

The public healthcare system mostly works, even if underfunded and with problems. In Bucharest we benefited from treatments and expertise that would be very expensive out of pocket or difficult to find. Private healthcare is mostly a hoax, much like private education (in this country), stop paying for it.

Bribery is much less common. Still happens, but you can also get in trouble.

We barely have any homeless people, all the shopping malls are full, and home ownership is very high. Official stats can be misleading.

Our politicians are incompetents, that's true, but we are in NATO, we are in EU, we are a regional power, and we avoided far-right strongmen or communists thus far.

Many Romanians have emigrated, lifting the economy actually, and also many came back. Since the shock of the 90s, the country's economy became really fluid.

Unfortunately, Romanians are some of the most pessimist people.

> The total taxes you pay on a regular work contract are around 41.5%, and much of that goes to pensions.

With VAT on each purchase (unless you're not living month to month, and are able to set aside some of your income) the effective taxation is closer to 60%.

I don't want to go into the topic of why I think progressive taxation is better than what we have now, but I wanted to raise this point because many stop at the tax rate on their salary.

Pensions in Romania are a joke, ask your relatives that recently retired.

Can I remind you that out of the immediate survivors of the Colectiv fire, 70% of them contracted hospital-acquired infections? (Which were conveniently overlooked by the coroner) Private healthcare is a hoax that most employers can and will redirect their contribution to, further increasing the hole in which the public sector is getting into.

Bribery isn’t less common, it’s just becoming increasingly inaccessible to common folk. Police is still in cahoots with “businessmen”. Health and safety authorisations are still handed out like hotcakes to the ones in the inner circle. -> https://www.romania-insider.com/investigations-and-dismissal...

Our malls are full but industry is dead. We’re a consumer economy

We’re part of NATO, oh so proud of it, yet barely scrape together an impotent 1.6% of GDP for our defence. Our navy is in such bad state that in NATO joint exercises foreign soldiers training with us thought our ship was on fire (it wasn’t, just badly maintained and burning with a thick black smoke).

I also find it funny that you say we “avoided communists” and “home ownership is high” in the same breath. I wonder why home ownership is that high, and what policy lead to that.

>Can I remind you that out of the immediate survivors of the Colectiv fire, 70% of them contracted hospital-acquired infections

That is indeed terrible, but as another who emigrated west I realized, malpraxis is rampant here as well, it just doesn't make it into the news as much. Incompetent doctors and medical whoopsies can kill me here as well even if the system is overall better.

> Pensions in Romania are a joke, ask your relatives that recently retired.

Both my parents have decent pensions. It's directly proportional to your contributions. Small lifetime contributions, small pension. Nowadays, a part of those contribution also gets invested, and my current net worth would actually allow me to retire right now.

> Bribery isn’t less common, it’s just becoming increasingly inaccessible to common folk.

Bribery being less accessible literally means that it's less common, but maybe we aren't speaking the same language. Local police is more corruptible, but try bribing DIICOT, see how well that works out. Also, in general, there have been many cases in which people got caught taking bribes, so, depending on who you try bribing, you can be kicked out of the room, or contacted by authorities.

Colective was a tragedy. But it was also a hyped news story by all tabloids. My son suffered from Lylle's syndrome when he was 1-year-old, also treated at one of the hospitals where they treat burned victims. He was also born premature at 30 weeks with 1.2 Kg. My mother was operated for acute pancreatitis, which at that time had a 70% death rate. I have an aunt that's a cancer survivor. Both me and my father had several surgeries in our public hospitals. And I don't practice bribery. Take from this what you will.

> "Our malls are full but industry is dead. We’re a consumer economy"

Yet we are producing and exporting more than ever, with the GDP going through the roof, adjusted for inflation. What in the world is a "consumer economy" anyway?

I hear these same words from my father, a common myth, but he has the excuse that he was a communist party member. What's yours?

> "I also find it funny that you say we “avoided communists” and “home ownership is high” in the same breath. I wonder why home ownership is that high, and what policy lead to that."

During communism home ownership was nearly zero, as everything was owned by the state. And nowadays Bucharest is in the top cities when it comes to affordable housing when reported to the number of average salaries needed to buy a home. City planning is poor, nearly non-existent in places, but Romania builds plenty of housing, which makes it affordable, with some exceptions.

Do you still live in Romania? And if you do, do you know the country you're living in? :-)

> I wonder why home ownership is that high, and what policy lead to that.

Post-Soviet privatization?

If I had to guess...

Romania was never soviet.

It really depends on your personality. If you're used to the niceties of the west, you may be frustrated by many things in Romania. The infrastructure is still behind. If you're more laid back you adapt and learn to enjoy. Being healthy helps a lot.

Pro: Amazing nature, you can do whatever you want, entrepreneurial spirit, great Gbit (!!!) WiFi everywhere, lovely people

Con: Bad streets, derelict villages, corrupt politics, low trust

Please do this in France too. So much land, but agriculture everywhere.

There’s a moment in the movie R.M.N. where a young Frenchman is in town to “count the bears”. During a town hall, he tries to explain that he’s there to help identify how many bears there are and help protect them.

One local throws a jab back at him: “You kill all the bears in your country and reap the benefits of developing [your land/economy], and then come to ours and tell us to protect nature.”

Fantastic movie, highly recommended. If you do watch it, watch the original version with the burnt in subtitles. The subtitles have different colours to indicate which language is being spoken, and it has a lot of relevance for the movie and context.

Totally. Brazil is having great economic benefits from cutting down its rain-forests and farming cattle. Just like Europeans and Americans did.

People like to eat.

Reminds me of a fast food slogan, "Ya gotta eat! Rally's!"... not exactly the most appetizing slogan.

Way too much, as shows the spreading obesity epidemic.

France is a major food exporter. Some of those lands could be re-acquired by the state for non-food uses.

Our capitalist world economy equates wealth based on extraction, not preservation. It really needs to be reimagined if we're going to be sustainable at all.

That exported food is also feeding people.

> Our capitalist world economy equates wealth based on extraction, not preservation

Why is there no shortage of corn, cows, pigs, and chickens, then?

Let them eat cake!

How do they intend to install the super volcano underneath?

Wonder if they have considered albania. From what I have seen it has an amazing landscape and imo better t

> European Yellowstone

That makes it sound like national parks were invented in the USA and there are no national parks in Europe ... So when a new store opens outside of the US it's called European Wallmart?

It's a direct quote from somebody who donated to the project, found in the first paragraph of the article:

> The aim is to create “the European Yellowstone,” as the largest donor of the initiative described it

National parks were invented by the USA and Yellowstone was the first one in 1872. It is also very large.

Yellowstone is massive, but only 4% the size of Romania.

https://mapfight.xyz/map/ro/#yellowstone

yellowstone is literally called the first national park in the world so...yes?

To cite sources:

>> On March 1, 1872, President Ulysses S. Grant signed The Act of Dedication law that created Yellowstone National Park. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellowstone_National_Park#Hi...

I believe the Yellowstone claim is based on the fact that it was the first park explicitly declared for the benefit of the public by a federal government.

There are national park-like things that existed before, but they were often technically owned by the King or somesuch.

The article says it's the term used by the largest donor to the project.

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