NORTH-WESTERN JOURNAL OF ZOOLOGY 10 (Supplement 1): S51-S61 ©NwjZ, Oradea, Romania, 2014 Article No.: 140503 http://biozoojournals.ro/nwjz/index.html << Fauna of the Romanian protected areas - A special issue in memoriam of Acad.Dr.Doc. Petru M. Bănărescu >> Amphibian conservation in traditional cultural landscapes: the case of Central Romania Tibor HARTEL 1,3, *, Tibor SOS 2,3 , Viorel D. POPESCU 4,7 , Raluca Ioana BąNCILą 5, 6, 8 , Dan COGąLNICEANU 6 and Laurenţiu ROZYLOWICZ 7 1. Sapientia Hungarian University of Transylvania, Faculty of Sciences and Arts, Department of Environmental Studies, Calea Turzii 4, 0264 Cluj-Napoca, Romania, E-mail: hartel.tibor@gmail.com 2. “Milvus Group” Bird and Nature Protection Association, str. Crinului 22, Târgu Mureş, Romania, E-mail: tibor.sos@gmail.com 3. Mihai Eminescu Trust, str. Cojocarilor 10, Sighisoara, Romania. 4. Earth to Ocean Research Group, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, BC V5A 4G5, Canada, Email: vioreldpopescu@gmail.com 5. Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, Winterthurerstrasse 190, CH-8057 Zurich, Switzerland. 6. University Ovidius Constanţa, Faculty of Natural Sciences and Agricultural Sciences, Al. UniversitĆţii 1, Corp B, 900740, Constanţa, Romania, E-mail: dcogalniceanu@univ-ovidius.ro 7. University of Bucharest, Center for Environmental Research and Impact Studies, 1 Nicolae Balcescu, 010041, Bucharest, Romania, E-mail: laurentiu.rozylowicz@g.unibuc.ro 8. “Emil RacoviţĆ” Institute of Speleology of Romanian Academy, 13 Sptembrie Road, No. 13, 050711, Bucharest, Romania. *Corresponding author, T. Hartel, E-mail: hartel.tibor@gmail.com Received: 23. May 2014 / Accepted: 21. September 2014 / Available online: 09. October 2014 / Printed: December 2014 Abstract. Much of the rural landscapes of Central and Western Europe went through drastic changes during the past centuries as a result of rapid socio-economic development. In some Central and Eastern European countries, the geopolitical and institutional instability slowed the pace of the modern economic development, thus many regions are still characterized by less intensive (‘traditional’) landuse practices. In this study we address the value of traditional landuse practices for amphibians from Southern Transylvania, Romania. The region includes a Natura 2000 Site of Community Importance of 85,000 hectares. We show that the great majority and a high diversity of amphibian ponds were created and maintained by traditional human activities in the studied rural region. These ponds support rich amphibian communities with dense population networks; we documented these for two anurans: the Common Toad (Bufo bufo) and the Yellow Bellied Toad (Bombina variegata). We conclude that large areas of this region are in favourable conservation status for amphibians and their habitats. The traditional landuse practices are not a free, proactive option for most of the inhabitants of rural regions; therefore, they are vulnerable to change (e.g. agriculture intensification and mechanization). In order to better understand the opportunities and challenges of managing these cultural landscapes for amphibians we propose a social-ecological conservation framework. Such a framework simultaneously considers the main features of the social system (e.g. social and economic aspirations of people, governance structures, knowledge types and attitudes towards the natural and cultural environment), as the landscape features (e.g. topography, landcover types, bioclimatic conditions, vegetation, hydrology) and the ways how these two interact to influence wetland connectivity, pond quality and amphibian population structure. Examples are given on the implications of adopting a social-ecological framework on amphibian conservation in cultural landscapes. Key words: traditional landuse, Southern Transylvania, biodiversity conservation, Natura 2000, social-ecological systems. Introduction Cultural landscapes suffered sharp changes in the past centuries in much of Europe. The major social drivers of the changes are represented by growth of human population, resource exploitation, ur- banization, and globalization of the commodity market, the infrastructural, technological and in- stitutional development and the political context (Plieninger & Bieling 2012, Hartel et al. 2014). Rapid socio-economic development was ham- pered in some regions of Europe, mainly due to socio-political and institutional instability. In these conditions, rural communities still retained many features of the old landuses, biodiversity compo- nents and traditional knowledge which largely disappeared from other parts of Europe (Tryja- nowski et al. 2011, Oteros-Rozas et al. 2012, Babai & Molnar 2013). As a consequence, the remaining traditional rural regions of Europe have many natural and cultural values worth conserving (e.g. Halada et al. 2011, Wright et al. 2012). The appeal