About Communities

   The general picture regarding local communities is outlined as follows:

• the population is mostly located outside the boundaries of the protected natural area. The urban areas inside the natural protected area are represented by land for road infrastructure, railways and utilities, partly for residential functions or for cult units. The housing is dispersed, non-permanent (such as the “plaiurilor” area within the radius of UAT Bumbești Jiu, Gorj), and the stretches with possible urban agglomerations are represented by inner-city areas such as Vișina (restaurants, motels, small grouping of houses), Luncani (small grouping of housing), Meri (station, small cluster of housing), Lainici (monastery, station), all within the jurisdiction of the Bumbești-Jiu Territorial Administrative Unit, Gorj county.

   The majority of the population belonging to the Territorial Administrative Units that own lands included in the protected natural area, have a low interest in it, the interest shown being concreted in the participation in religious rituals, fishing trips, green grass, harvesting of forest by-products. Very rarely do we meet community members who participate in hiking and fewer and fewer of those who maintain traditional activities in the outlying areas of the plains.

   The same interest is shown by the population of neighboring localities (eg Târgu Jiu).

1. utilities are partially developed within the natural protected area and are represented by water and sewerage networks in certain inner-city areas within the Bumbești-Jiu Territorial Administrative Unit, Gorj County: Vișina (restaurants, motels, small cluster of houses), Luncani (cluster small housing). There is no gas network inside the natural protected area, the electricity network is not developed, it stops in the area with technological activity of the quarry in the Meri area. In the case of the CFR bus, the high-voltage electrical network is its own. There are two electricity transmission lines, over which the forest fund overlaps, included in the sustainable development area (Meri/ Gorj area and Gambrinus/ Hunedoara area).
2. for the Territorial Administrative Units – Schela (Gorj county), Aninoasa and Vulcan (Hunedoara county), the areas included in the protected natural area are represented by non-urban areas (forests, mountain hollows) and human settlements are missing.
3. information about livestock in certain localities, was not transmitted by those in law, at the request of the administration. From the inventory made by the administration of the protected natural area, it turned out that within the radius of the national park there is a herd of about 1,000 sheep and 250 cattle. Of these, about 100 sheep and about 100 cattle are permanent in the isolated areas of the Bumbești-Jiu “plain”, Gorj county, the difference being represented by animals that participate annually in the grazing process. No frequent and/or special cases of interaction with wildlife have been recorded.

   We specify that at the level of the protected natural area, there are concerns for economic activities in the following fields:

– motels and restaurants (Vișina area, Bumbești-Jiu, Gorj county);

– animal husbandry (sheep and cattle grazing in the Sapa Argele and Chenia Dumitra mountain hollows);

– road and railway infrastructure (National Road Infrastructure Administration Company for DN 66 Bumbești-Jiu – Petroșani and CFR for the railway within the same sector);

– hunting and fishing management (AVPS Elite Hunting and AVPS Băniceana hunting associations, Gorj Forestry Directorate, Pro Fisher Association);

– fish farming (production of salmonids and cyprinids in Lainci Monastery, Gorj county);

– agriculture (pasture areas/hayfields for which APIA subsidies are obtained, mostly located in the Bumbești-Jiu plains, Gorj county);

– partial extraction of non-renewable mineral resources (the quarry in the Meri area);

– exploitation of wood mass (partially, on surfaces with such regulations).

   From the analysis of the activities identified especially at the time of approval/authorization, it emerged that the number of activity owners is relatively small. The impact of the activities carried out are dealt with accordingly in the specific chapters of this management plan.

   Defileul Jiului National Park Administration carried out in the period September 2015 – June 2016, an action resumed during the spring of 2020, an inventory of all constructions and accessible lands in the area of the protected natural area, an inventory that synthesized data such as: the name of the owner ( if known), GPS coordinates of the built-up area, description of the type of construction, its condition, the owner’s permanence at the property, visual assessment of the size of the surface in the property, the way the land is used, other relevant information, as the case may be. In the course of 2021, access routes within the range of the protected natural area as well as the existing springs or catchments were also inventoried (see map no. 3.25).

   The General Urban Plan of the city of Bumbești-Jiu/Gorj county, approved in 2020, includes in the inner city the buildings located in the area of Vişina, Luncani, Meri, Lainici, partially Plai Bâlbea, Trîntor and Locurele – Pustnic. The administration of the Defileul Jiului National Park provided the necessary information represented by the zoning, the own inventory of the constructions in the Defileul Jiului National Park (outside the compact inner-city areas – Luncani, Lainici) to the competent institutions.

   Most of the constructions in the area of the protected natural area are represented by “mansions”. “The plai mansion in Bumbești-Jiu is the seasonal home, used in the summer, when the cattle go to graze in the mountains. It is a house with two rooms, “house with fire” and “stove”, they have a window in front of the rooms, made of beams carved into four corners. They are not plastered on the outside. Since the only way of access to the manor was and remains the path when building the plai manors, materials collected from the immediate vicinity were used: stone, earth, wood, water” (Stolojanu-Munteanu, 2003).

   After the year 2000, there was a massive depopulation of the “mansions” (from the “Plai” area – Bîlbea, Trîntor, Comandă, Căcata – belonging to the Bumbești-Jiu Territorial Administrative Unit, Gorj county) and the withdrawal of people to populated areas, urban or rural, with a minimum of utility infrastructure. Currently, there are no more members of the community who have continuity during a calendar year in the plains area. Elderly people (over 65 years old) have a rare frequency of returning to the areas where they lived part of their lives, returning only to recall some memories, when they have the opportunity to move around motorized or sporadically, to provide “consultation” to their descendants , in the identification of the property and certain indications regarding the scope of agricultural activities.

   There are very few people between 30 and 60 years of age and they return sporadically to the areas of the mansions, with the aim of carrying out certain works necessary to fulfill certain conditions imposed by institutions that provide subsidies for agricultural land. There are very few who want to continue the traditional activities of cultivating land and raising animals, and who, in addition to these, also consider preserving or modernizing the ancillary functions (buildings for living, stables, fences, etc.).

   In other areas outside the protected natural area (e.g. Ogrin, Gambrinus – Hunedoara County, Gol de Munte Chenia – Dumitra – Gorj County), there was no concern for traditional subsistence activities, similar to the areas in Plaiul Bumbești-Jiu. This concern does not exist at the level of the 2015-2021 period either, noting the same trends at least in the near future, during the period of application of this management plan.

   The administration of the protected natural area understood that the depopulation of the floodplain area within the radius of Bumbești-Jiu township, Gorj county, with the practice of traditional activities over long periods of time, is assimilated to a loss of the area’s identity and through the measures taken through this management plan, tries to encourage the resettlement of human permanence in the mentioned areas, by supporting the development of the range of traditional activities such as: land cultivation activities with the preservation of some proportions compared to their use in the past (resulting from the testimonies of elderly people), maintaining a mosaic of surfaces, with cultivated land (vegetables, orchards) and natural hay, mowed manually or with as little intervention as possible of small, motorized machines.

   It should be mentioned that, as it results from the discussions with community members and workers from the local authority, there is no accuracy in the voluntary declaration of all the surfaces owned by natural persons. Few people have legal documents regarding the possession of land in the Plaiului Bumbești Jiu area or documents regarding the constructions made in such areas. As a rule, smaller areas are declared, for fear of financial pressure regarding taxes. We mention that the predominant use of the land was and still is as pasture/hay, the cultivation of the land being carried out on small areas, located around the “mansions” – annexed agricultural holdings. These activities were conditioned by: the isolation of the land from rural or urban agglomerations, small areas with a soil composition that allows the support of vegetable or fruit/horticultural crops, the slope of the land, the lack of water sources, favoring the incidence of conflicts with the species of wild animals that use the land as a place for food, rest, reproduction, etc.

   Thus, in order to comply with the legislation in force and to facilitate permanence in the exposed outlying areas, where agricultural activities are still carried out, the Administration of the Defileul Jiului National Park became aware of the need for differentiated zoning of the surfaces in the Defileul Jiului National Park and created sustainable development zones in the proximity of these existing agricultural annexes and where there is still an interest in maintaining and developing traditional agricultural activities. The areas thus included in the sustainable development zone are not clearly located with coordinates, the reason being the lack of cadastre of the localities included in the Jiului Gorge National Park. In these areas, land cultivation and animal husbandry are allowed. The construction regime is regulated by the new General Urban Plan of the Bumbești-Jiu locality, which, at the same time, we emphasize that it is the locality with

   We specify that, in the document sent by the representatives of the Bumbești-Jiu Territorial Administrative Unit, Gorj county, the exact location of these areas is not attached, so that these areas cannot be shown on the map. To have control over the activities carried out in the protected natural area, correlated with the transmitted data