Gordon Wiltsie

Deep slog: author David Quammen, right, and tracker Peter Surth in pursuit of wolves.

BUT TO ANNOUNCE a policy of protection is one thing; real safety against the forces of change is another. Barbara and I get a noisy reminder of that difference, in the upper valley, during an excursion to set traps for her lynx study.

We're twentysome miles above Zarnesti, where the Barsa road narrows to a single snowmobile trail. Barbara has driven her Skidoo, loaded with custom-made leg-hold traps and other gear, me riding my skis at the end of a tow rope behind. In the fresh snow at trailside we've seen multiple sets of lynx prints, as well as varied signs of other animals—deep tracks from several red deer that came wallowing down off a slope, fox tracks, even one set from a restless bear that has interrupted its hibernation for a stroll. Late in the afternoon, just as Barbara finishes camouflaging her last trap, we hear the yowl of another snowmobile ascending the valley. At first I assume that it must be Christoph's. But as the machine throttles back, I see it's a large recreational Polaris, driven by a middle-aged stranger in a fur hat, with a woman on the seat behind him. Then I notice that Barbara has stiffened.

She exchanges a few sentences in Romanian with the stranger. He seems rather jovial; Barbara speaks curtly. The man swings his snowmobile around us and goes ripping on up the valley. When he's beyond earshot, which is instantly, Barbara explains what just transpired.

Claims he's from Brasov, she says. But he is not Romanian, to judge from his accent. Probably a wealthy Italian with a second home. When he heard what Barbara was doing—setting traps to catch lynx—he thought she meant trapping for pelts, and he acted snooty. When she added that it's for a radio-tracking study, he graced her with his patronizing and ignorant approval. Oh, you're doing wildlife research—OK. His ladyfriend, on the other hand, was worried. "She asked if it would be dangerous to continue, with all the lynx in here. Ya, it would," Barbara says caustically. "Keep out." The upper valley is closed to joy-riding traffic, and those two have no business being here, Barbara explains. Unlimited motorized access, along with development sprawl and other symptoms of the new liberty and affluence, are now a damn sight more threatening to the lynx population—and the wolves, and the bears—than fur-trapping, judicious timbering, or even the crude, spoliatory hunting once practiced by Nicolae Ceausescu, with all his minions and helicopter pads.

Barbara has never before seen a recreational snowmobile in Zarnesti, let alone up here. "Aaagh," she says, as the roar of the Polaris fades above us. "It all starts with one. There are so many rich guys in Brasov now."