Wild Nature in Europe — Richard Golian

Europe is the most human-shaped continent on Earth. Every forest has been logged at least once. Every river has been dammed, diverted or straightened. And yet — pockets of genuine wilderness remain. Old-growth forests in the Carpathians. Mountain valleys where bears and wolves still move freely. Landscapes that look the way they did centuries ago. I grew up near some of these places. The forests above Banská Bystrica were not parks. They were ecosystems — dense, unpredictable, alive in a way that no managed landscape can replicate. The Great Fatra and the Low Tatras, with the highest brown bear density in the EU, lynx, wolves, and ridge hikes where you can walk for days without seeing another person. These articles are reflections on what European wilderness actually looks like today. What survives. What is disappearing. And why it matters — not just ecologically, but for how we understand our place in a world we have not fully conquered, no matter how much we pretend otherwise.