The Romanian Ecologist Party (Romanian: Partidul Ecologist Român) was founded by Petre Metanie, a teacher, in 1978 as a political organisation opposed to Nicolae Ceaușescu and the Romanian Communist Party's policy of indiscriminate economic growth, without regard for ecological consequences. In the seventies a large number of children were born malformed due to high levels of chemical pollution in the air, water and food. The fauna also suffered enormously due to dams built in the path of the natural migration of fish, and there was damage to populations of wild boar, deer and birds.