Mammals

The Greater noctule bat is Europe's largest species of bat. It is also among its most rare.
Small mammals

Rodents make up a large proportion of the mammals in Romania, especially in the low-lying plains.
This includes species of hamsters, field mice, ground squirrels, voles, dormice, red squirrels, nutrias
and beavers. Other common small mammals include shrews, rabbits, hedgehogs, polecats, martens
and badgers.[1]

The bat population in Romania is particularly plentiful with a total of 32 species present in the
country.[32] The Huda lui Papară cave in the Trascău Mointains is home to the largest known bat
colony in Europe,[33][34] while the Topolnița Cave in Mehedinți hosts the largest colony of greater
horseshoe bat on the continent.[35] Several other caves display extraordinary biodiversity, with up to
20 species of bats living in the same cave system.[32] Romania is also home to the greater noctule bat
(Nyctalus lasiopterus),[36] a rare species that is Europe's largest and least studied bat, as well as
probably its most threatened.[37] It is a carnivorous bat that eats insects and even regularly preys on
birds.

Megafauna

Herbivores and omnivores

The chamois has been the subject of some of the most robust conservation efforts in Romania
Large species of non-carnivorous mammals in Romania include the Carpathian boar, fallow deer,
red deer, roe deer and the chamois. The endangered saiga antelope was once common in Moldavia
and Eastern Wallachia, but has gone all but existent in the 18th century. Today only a few specimens
survive in a small natural reserve in the northeastern county of Botoșani.[38][39] The chamois is a
protected species in Romania and is the subject of several conservation efforts.[40][41]

The European bison, the largest European land mammal, became extinct in the region in the 18th
century,[42] However, in 1958, Romania began the reintroduction of the bison into its nature reserves.
In the 21st century, Romania also began reintroducing the European bison in the wild, the ninth
country to do so as part of a continent-wide effort that saw the total number of bison in Europe go
from 54 captive individuals in 1927 to more than 7000 in 2018.[43][44][45] In 2016, there were over 100
bison living in wild or semi-wild areas in different regions of Romania.[46]

Romania is also home to the Danube Delta horses, a population of feral horses that has lived for
hundreds of years in and around Letea Forest in the Danube Delta and is possibly the last sizable
population of wild horses in Europe.[47][48] After collective farms were closed down in the 1990s, the
population was supplanted by freed horses and by the beginning of the 21st century, it increased to
around 4000 individuals, turning them into a threat to the protected flora of the region.[49][50]
Following media and public outrage in 2011, authorities walked back on the initial plan of killing
the horses and the population is now controlled through birth-control vaccines.[51]

Over 6000 brown bears live in Romania

Carnivores

The large species of carnivores living in Romania are the European wildcat, the Eurasian lynx, the
red fox, the golden jackal, the grey wolf and the brown bear.[1]

There are over 6000 brown bears living in Romania, in one of the largest concentrations in Europe.
[52] Because of the increasing number of interactions with settled areas, including a number of

attacks, but also because the "optimum size of the population of brown bear, from an ecological,
social and economic point of view" is around 4000, the Romanian government announced plans in
2018 for a culling of about 2000 of the country's brown bears. This measured was met with hostility
by many conservationist organisations and the public.[53]

Marine mammals
One species of porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) and several species of dolphins live in the Black Sea
off the cost of Romania.[1][54] While the endangered Mediterranean monk seal still occurs in the
Black Sea, it has not been recorded in Romanian waters for several decades.[54]

New arrivals

Several non-native species of mammals were introduced to Romania during the 20th Century.
Among these the most notable are the East-Asian raccoon dog, which spread to Europe through the
USSR and was first seen in Romania in 1951,[55] the European mouflon, which was introduces
starting with 1966 in game reserves and later in the wilderness,[56] and the North-American muskrat,
which was introduced to Romania accidentally, after individuals which escaped captivity in Czech
and Russian farms spread across the continent around the middle of the century.[57]