Source: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210923-the-revival-of-spains-epic-pastoral-migration
As late May approached, the animals were growing restless. In little more than a day, the heat from the southerly desert winds had turned the grass dry, leaving Jesús Garzón’s herd of 1,100 sheep and goats little to eat. Garzón knew – and the animals, nervous and bleating, knew as well – it was time to head north, where cool weather and fresh pastures awaited them.
Ahead lay an over 400km (250-mile) journey by foot across the Iberian Peninsula through heat, cold, wind and rain. Out of the winter lowlands west of Madrid, past crops of barley and wheat, through holm oak meadows speckled with juniper and rosemary, to forests of scots pines, where imperial eagles nest and black vultures breed. Continuing north through villages and cities into the territory of roe deer, wild boar and wolves, ascending plateaus and descending river valleys until, a month later, they would arrive at their summer destination: the mountain pastures in the Picos de Europa.
Every spring and autumn, Garzón and his herd make this seasonal migration, called transhumance – from the Latin trans for “across” and humus for “earth” – a form of pastoralism where animals typically move to and from summer highlands and winter lowlands to take advantage of seasonal peaks in pastures and avoid extreme temperatures.
After being abandoned for half a century, the recovery of transhumance in Spain demonstrates how pastoralism, a livelihood suited to coping with uncertainty and sustainable food systems, can help preserve biodiversity, while breathing life into depopulated rural areas.
Practiced by 200 to 500 million people across the world’s rangelands – grasslands, savannahs, mountain pastures, tundra and steppe covering half the earth’s land surface – pastoralism is significant socially, environmentally and economically. Yet misconceptions and an underappreciation of its benefits means it has been largely overlooked in international sustainability discussions and agendas.
As a herder who has also been at the forefront of efforts to revive this ancient practice and raise awareness of its importance, Garzón understands its potential, and its challenges, well.
Read more
***
Association
Trashumancia y Naturaleza (TyN)
[Assocation for Transhumance and Nature]
Website: https://trashumanciaynaturaleza.org/
Trashumancia y Naturaleza (TyN) promotes since 1992 the mobile pastoralism of shepherds and livestock along the Spanish drove-roads, as key ecological corridors connecting areas of high ecological value, to minimize fragmentation and enhance biodiversity. TyN also promotes pastoralism as a High Nature Value Farming system a key “retroinnovation” tool for fighting climate change and as key provider of ecosystems services, among them the provision of sustainable products such as wool. TyN manage its own transhumant merino sheep herd of about 1500 head that crosses the centre of Madrid every year as a raising awareness action to highlight the importance of maintaining our pastoral systems. We also encourage the use of wool as a sustainable product and support a group of women who transform wool into beautiful textile items, part of the produced using our transhumant merino wool. TyN collaborates as well with more than 50 pastoral families.
TyN has been awarded with the “Slow Food Award 2000”, the “I Jane Goodall Award” in 2010, the “BBVA Award” for biodiversity conservation and the Adenex Research Award in 2015.
Source: European Wool Exchange
Contacts
Maria Fernandez-Gimenez, professor of rangeland ecology and management at Colorado State University / https://collaborativeconservation.org/fernandez-gimenez_maria_fernandez-gimenez/
Assoc. Prof. Francisco Martín Azcárate
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid | UAM · Faculty of Science
https://www.uam.es/ss/Satellite/Ciencias/es/1242664611851/1242664461978/persona/detallePDI/Martin_Azcarate,_Francisco.htm
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Francisco-Azcarate
Elisa Oteros-Rozas, researcher at the Open University of Catalonia
https://mon.uvic.cat/catedra-agroecologia/en/team/elisa-oteros-rozas/
***
LIFE CAÑADAS project
https://www.lifecanadas.es/en/
with funds from th EU (60%) and the partners of the project (40%)
Reconnecting spaces of the Natura 2000 Network with living sheep trails
Conservation and restoration of the livestock
This LIFE project is co-financed by the European Commission, and has a total budget of 1.848.211€. It is coordinated by the Autonomous University of Madrid and counted with the participation as partners of the Directorate-General of Agriculture, Livestock, and Food of the Community of Madrid, the Directorate-General of Forest Policy and Natural areas of castilla-La Mancha, SEO BirdLife, and the Association Field In.
The objective of this project will be to make conservation actions and ecological restoration in a part of the livestock of the Community of Madrid and in the Cañada Real Cuenca, in the Community of Castile – La Mancha, with the purpose of recovering their ecological role and improve connectivity between spaces of the Natura 2000 Network.
The actions will focus on two areas: on the one hand, the Cañada Real Cuenca, who joins the Sierra Morena to the Sierra de Albarracín, where it is still held by some migrating flocks; and on the other the network of drovers roads from the Community of Madrid, to a great extent impaired by neglect, erosion or encroachment by other uses, which has led to a severe loss of diversity in the same.
