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Welcome to the BBC World Service. You're listening to assignment with me Lucy Ash in the heart of Romania.

It's early morning and Dimitra Capita has come to check on his flock.

As the sun rises over the Carpathian mountains, it's hard to imagine that a few months back,

this grey-haired man in Elamswall hat was one of

around 4,000 shepherds on the streets of the Romanian capital confronted by riot police.

Yeah, I went to the protest. I had tear guys in my eyes and it felt really bad.

We were loads of people and we were supposed to be more but they just didn't let us in. They stopped our buses at the Bucharest entrance.

So what provoked this extraordinary rural revolt.

Men clad in floor-length sheepskins shimmied up the walls around the parliament.

There was a bizarre mix of wooden staffs and police trunctions,

traditional hats and helmets. Dimitru, a stocky man with a weather-beaten face and heavy eyebrows, has spent his whole

life outdoors. He travelled to Bucharest to protest against government plans to limit the number of

sheep dogs he's allowed to guard his flock. Romania is a country teeming with wolves,

jackals, and the highest concentration of bears in Europe, as

Dimitri knows to his cost. The bear came and took one of my sheep so I went after it in the woods. The bear

attacked me, knocked me down and it was trying to slice my belly and I try to protect myself.

But Dimitra, what made you go and chase a bear?

If you let the bear come and take one of your sheep,

the bear will come again tomorrow and then the next evening and it's going

...