Grosii Tiblesului is a commune with 2200 inhabitants in the county of Maramures with an exceptional beautiful landscape: hills with hay meadows, rivers and mountains covered with natural and pristine forests. It?s the closest community to the Tibles Mountains. Forests are owned by the state and partly by the local community (Grosii Tiblesului Composesorat Association). They are managed by the Grosii Tiblesului Forest District. There is still a significant area of old growth forest (about 4000 ha) and natural forests, being a valuable habitat for the brown bear, wolf, red deer, wild boar, lynx, marten, rare species of birds and plants. The old growth forest area is the last one in the Maramures county.
The commune is surrounded by traditionaly managed meadows and the local people are proudly maintain their customs and culture that are belonging to the Lapusului ethnographical region.

Activities proposed in this project will contribute to the biodiversity conservation and to the sustainable management of the natural resources by involving local community. A part of the process is consisting in supporting the community to change the resource use from timber harvesting to ecotourism development. In this sense the project will support the sustainable use of natural resurses and support the developemnt of new income generating activities for the locals by inventorying the biodiversity and mapping the last pristine forests from Maramures county, by developing a study to identify natural/traditional products potential and estimate the possibility to revigorate the traditional activities/handicrafts, by identifying and presenting to local producers legal requirements for traditional products (especially food) and possibilities to sell these products and by training the local producers on EU/legal requirements for local products.

Other important objective is to develop the local community capacity to initiate income generation activities. The local community will establish an association that will sustainable manage the natural resources, a Community Centre will be developed and the locals will be trained. The Community Centre will consist in a Tourist Information Office, a Local Traditions Museum, a Community Support Office and a store for local products. Trainings will help the community to develop and improve their tourism services and to build their capacity to coordinate the Community Centre.

The ecotourism will be sustained by creating key infrastructure elements: a bear observatory will be constructed, tourism trails for tracking and cycling will be set up and ecoturism program for the region will be developed, heaving as a central attraction the brown bear.
The awarenes raising and promoting activities will consist in printing tourism brochures and maps, developing an educational kit regarding brown bears and running educational actitivities, creating a web site and promoting the Tibles ecotourism destination at national and international level.