logo
episode-header-image
Mar 2016
28m 8s

Romania: The Shepherds Revolt

Bbc Radio 4
About this episode

Lucy Ash asks why thousands of angry Romanian shepherds recently stormed the parliament in Bucharest. Sparked by an amendment to Romania's hunting law, the unprecedented protest was over plans to limit numbers of sheepdogs and restrict grazing rights. The increasing size of flocks is leading to growing conflict with both hunters and conservationists over land use. Romania has an influential hunting lobby - around two thirds of MPs are hunters - and they accuse shepherds dogs of scaring off or sometimes even killing their quarry. They also claim overgrazing is damaging the natural habitat of the deer, the boar and other wild animals they hunt. Environmental campaigners are concerned that winter grazing by ever larger flocks is having a catastrophic effect on biodiversity. At heart this is an argument about what the countryside is for. Is its main purpose an economic one? Is it primarily for leisure? Or should it be about the people who live there? Shepherds insist the law is an attack on centuries of sheep-rearing and their culture and traditions.

Up next
Aug 19
Europe’s migrant crisis: the truck that shocked the world
In the summer of 2015, tens of thousands of people left their homes in Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq in the hope of finding a safe haven in Europe. The journeys they took were often hazardous and not everyone reached their destination. In one of the most notorious cases, 71 migrant ... Show More
28m 13s
Aug 12
Tajikistan’s Last, Lonely Hyenas
For decades, conservationists in Tajikistan assumed that the striped hyena – a shy, less vocal cousin of the spotted hyena – was extinct there. But in 2017 a motion-sensitive camera trap in the country’s south-western corner, near the borders with Afghanistan and Uzbekistan, dete ... Show More
29m 10s
Aug 5
Waiting for my Dad - Ukraine's children of the missing
A pioneering summer camp for Ukrainian children with missing parents. According to the Ukrainian government, more than 70 thousand people are missing in the war, leaving families, including thousands of children, anxious for news of their loved ones and unable to move on.Psycholo ... Show More
30m 37s
Recommended Episodes
Apr 2022
Dying to hunt in France
Just before Christmas, 2021, Joel Vilard was driving his cousin home on a dual carriageway just south of Rennes in Brittany. Suddenly, a bullet flew through the window and hit the pensioner in the neck. He later died in hospital of injuries accidentally inflicted by a hunter firi ... Show More
27m 30s
Jul 2024
The Beast of Gévaudan
The Gévaudan district in Languedoc, in the south of France, is a region of ancient mountains covered in forest. In the second half of the XVIIIth century, it was a place to breed cattle. Life was hard and the people were poor, if not say miserable. It is the children who guarded ... Show More
19m 40s
Sep 2020
The trouble with Dutch cows
The Netherlands - small and overcrowded - is facing fundamental questions about how to use its land, following a historic court judgment forcing the state to take more urgent action to limit nitrogen emissions. Dutch nitrogen emissions - damaging the climate and biodiversity - ar ... Show More
26m 35s
Jun 2022
Walking the Iron Curtain: Wild lands reunited
In May 1952 East Germany sealed its entire border with the capitalist west. Over the next 37 years 75,000 people would be arrested trying to flee the Communist East and hundreds would die in the attempt. Today the barbed wire and machine guns are gone and the old border has been ... Show More
27m 45s
Apr 2024
Bonus: What in the World
A bonus episode from the What in the World podcast. When it comes to elephant conservation, Botswana is the world leader. It is now home to more than 130,000 elephants — or around a third of the world's elephant population. But this growing number poses major problems for humans: ... Show More
16m 1s
Oct 2021
Climate: Animals under threat
The changing planet is threatening a number of vulnerable and endangered species, and host Nuala McGovern hears from three experts on polar bears, snow leopards and bumble bees on why we should all care about what is happening to all animals. We learn about the importance of poll ... Show More
23m 46s
May 2023
A Mexican Wolf Pup’s Journey into the Wild
For centuries, Mexican gray wolves roamed the Southwest. But as cattle ranches spread, wolves became enemy number one, and by the 1970s the subspecies was nearly extinct. But after the Endangered Species Act was passed, the U.S. embarked on an ambitious plan to save the iconic pr ... Show More
25m 26s
Feb 2023
Uruguay’s Cash Cow
Cattle are part of Uruguay’s DNA. There are around 4 cows to every one of their tiny 3.5 million population of people and beef is their main export. But how do they compete against their mighty, better known neighbours; Argentina and Brazil? In this week’s Assignment Jane Chamber ... Show More
27m 23s