Bucharest, Feb 24 /Agerpres/ - Ten caves in the Apuseni Mountains will be prepared for caving under a unique programme in Romania conducted by the Bihor Centre for Protected Areas and Sustainable Development (CAPDD). The cave network will get financial assistance from Switzerland.

"They will be caves with adventure trails to be visited on demand by anyone in a good physical shape. We want to put caving on the map, in addition to tours of caves. Anyone can visit the caves provided that he or she is in the necessary physical shape allowing for traversing a cave using speleological gear, including harnesses, ropes and similar. The caves are ranked by difficulty, with some of them very easy to traverse using the walls for support or on all fours, while others are more difficult, with water trails and water falls," project coordinator Andrei Acs told AGERPRES.

All the ten caves included in the first caving network in Romania are located on the Natura 2000 site Crisu Repede - Padurea Craiului Canyon managed by the centre as a protected area of European interest.

The first tourists are expected in the summer of 2017, with the project team to conduct studies into the local speleological heritage and the potential risks involved. Management plans will also be drawn up and guides as well as administrative staff trained for the purpose.

"This is how we get to know the resistance capacity for each cave, namely the number of tourists that may visit the cave in say one month so as not to disturb the environment. The caves will then be prepared for caving safety, because they will not be visited by foot, such as the caves of Farcu and Meziad, but using speleological gear and specialist guides," said Acs.

Under the same project, promotional packages for the caves will also be drawn up as a specific ecotourism product to be included in the offerings of tour operators. By regulating the caves for caving, the Centre for Protected Areas and Sustainable Development of Bihor wants to provide a model worth imitating and applicable in the case of other Romanian caves.

Each caving tourist or group thereof will have to inform the centre about their intention to visit on the - www.padureacraiului.ro, where the latest developments in the projects cans also be followed, so that they may get a specialist guide and minimum training before entering the caves.

The project for the first caving network in Romania as a model for sustainable capitalisation on karstic heritage, is conducted February 15, 2015 - May 14, 2017, on 84,387 Swiss francs co-funded under a Swiss grant via the Swiss Contribution to the Enlarged European Union. The ten caves of the project are Ciur Ponor, Craiului, Vantului, Batranului, Galaseni, Hartopul Bonchii, Dobos, Gruet, Moanei and Osoi. AGERPRES (RO - author: Eugenia Pasca, editor: Elena Stanciu; EN - author: Corneliu-Aurelian Colceriu, editor: Adina Ana-Maria Panaitescu)