When Marta Calix moved to Guarda in Portugal’s Greater Côa Valley in 2019 to join Rewilding Portugal, she was swapping office-based conservation roles in Cambridge and Brussels for life in one of the country’s most remote rural landscapes. She was joining an ambitious effort to restore one of western Europe’s most important wildlife corridors, but first she had to understand the landscape and the people who called it home.
“That first year was really about getting to know the landscape. I was travelling around the different areas, meeting people, talking to landowners and local communities, and trying to understand not just the ecological challenges but also the reality of living here. It was a huge learning curve for me.”
Perhaps what struck her most was how little room there was for nature itself.
“There was this narrative that every little square inch of ground needed to be used for something economically productive or extractive in some way. Buying land, creating rewilding areas and allowing nature to have the time and space to recover was something that was pretty much missing from this landscape.”
That observation reflected one of the central ideas behind the project. Rather than restoring isolated sites, the aim was to create a network of rewilding areas through land purchase, management agreements and collaboration with local communities. By the end of the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme funding period, 1,063 hectares had been purchased or brought under management, establishing strategic core areas for nature recovery across the wider 318,000-hectare landscape.
Restoring natural processes
At the heart of the project is the idea that healthy landscapes depend on natural processes, not just protected areas.
Since 2021, Sorraia horses and Tauros cattle have been introduced into rewilding areas, where they graze as social herds, reducing wildfire risk and creating a richer mosaic of habitats. By the end of the project, natural grazing extended across more than 650 hectares of the Greater Côa Valley.
“It’s interesting because you have a landscape where, in some places, you have overgrazing, with too many cows confined in small, fenced areas. Then, just outside those fences, you have the opposite problem. There are no large herbivores at all, vegetation accumulates year after year and wildfire risk increases. It doesn’t make much sense when you step back and look at it.”
Rather than replacing conventional farming, the animals are restoring an ecological role that has largely disappeared.
“When these animals live as social herds and move naturally across the landscape, they graze differently. They create a mosaic of habitats, reduce the build-up of vegetation, recycle nutrients and create opportunities for many other species. That’s the role large herbivores used to play across Europe.”
The project is also challenging the way these animals are viewed.
“Ultimately, what we’re trying to show is that these processes belong across the wider landscape. Long term, we’d like these animals to be recognised not as livestock, but as wild or semi-wild herbivores carrying out an ecological role.”
Changing the conversation
Restoring natural processes within individual rewilding areas is one part of the challenge. Allowing approaches such as natural grazing to spread more widely also requires policies and incentives that support different ways of managing land.
“The way many agricultural subsidies are set up, they’re creating the wrong incentives. Rather than relying on people’s good intentions, we need to change those incentives so that more biodiversity-friendly practices make economic sense.”
Natural grazing is a good example of where existing legislation can create barriers. Sorraia horses and Tauros cattle are managed for their ecological role, but animals used for natural grazing are often classified as livestock, bringing requirements around identification, registration, health checks and carcass disposal that can restrict low-intervention management.
These challenges are now being explored through an Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme Advancing Restoration Knowledge grant. The Legal Status of Natural Grazers project is developing practical guidance to help restoration practitioners navigate existing regulations across six European jurisdictions, while also exploring the case for a future category of “kept wild” animals that could better reflect rewilding approaches.
“Even if we can’t have them designated as wild animals, you need some kind of intermediate, semi-wild category that recognises their role.”
For Marta, that is another example of why restoration depends on changing the system as well as the landscape.
Living alongside wildlife
As habitats recover and populations of prey species increase, Iberian wolves are beginning to return naturally to the Greater Côa Valley. Helping people live alongside them has become an important part of the restoration process.
Early in the project, the team interviewed more than 100 farmers, hunters, mayors and other local stakeholders to understand how people viewed wildlife and restoration. Some of those conversations challenged Marta’s own assumptions.
“One of the biggest surprises for me was meeting farmers who had experienced livestock losses to wolves but still had a very positive attitude towards them. One farmer told me, ‘The wolf has as much right to be here as we do.’ That really stayed with me because it wasn’t what I was expecting to hear.”
The conversations also revealed how varied local perspectives can be.
“It’s very easy to talk about ‘farmers’ or ‘hunters’ as though they’re one group with one opinion, but that’s simply not true. You find every point of view across the spectrum. Very often it’s the loudest and most negative voices that get the attention, while quieter, more positive voices aren’t heard in the same way.”
To help promote coexistence with wolves, the project has provided livestock guardian dogs, wolf-proof fencing and ongoing practical support for livestock farmers. During the project, 73 farmers received assistance and more than 90% reported high satisfaction with the support they received.
“We don’t just provide an electric fence and leave. We help people install it, we come back if something isn’t working and we provide ongoing support. That’s important because there really isn’t another organisation with the mandate to do that.”
Marta is realistic about how long that process takes.
“You can’t say that after five or six years we’ve transformed attitudes towards wolves across the whole Côa Valley. That’s not how these things work. But every conversation, every relationship and every bit of trust you build is another step in that direction.”
Making rewilding pay
Restoration also needs to work for local economies.
“Rewilding needs to be an economically attractive proposition. Otherwise it won’t scale. If we want this approach to spread across much larger landscapes, it can’t depend entirely on grants and conservation funding. It needs to create opportunities and livelihoods that people genuinely value.”
Building a nature-based economy has become a key part of the project. The Wild Côa Network connects accommodation providers, restaurants, tourism operators and local producers, while the Rewilding Centre, wildlife guide training and the 2023 CÔA – Corridor of Arts Festival have helped attract new visitors to the region. The festival alone welcomed more than 8,700 visitors and generated around €450,000 for the local economy.
“The Greater Côa Valley is one of the least visited parts of Portugal, even though it has enormous potential. People had to organise everything themselves. They had to find accommodation, book guides, arrange transport and work out where to go. There wasn’t a coherent tourism offer.”
Today, the rewilding areas have become the starting point for exploring the wider landscape.
“The rewilding areas are really the anchor. People come because they want to experience wildlife and nature, but then they stay in local accommodation, eat in local restaurants and discover everything else the region has to offer.”
New ways of financing restoration are also beginning to emerge.
“We’re starting to see interesting examples around the world. Biodiversity credits, payments for ecosystem services, insurance companies investing in restoration because it reduces future costs. Those kinds of mechanisms are becoming much more important.”
“We often talk about what restoration costs, but we rarely talk about what it saves. If beavers help retain water, if large grazers reduce wildfire risk or if healthier ecosystems prevent future damage, those are real economic benefits. They’re just not usually counted.”
A marathon, not a sprint
Six years of support from the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme have helped establish new rewilding areas, restore natural processes and strengthen partnerships with local communities across the Greater Côa Valley. But the project was never intended to be an end point.
“I think we’re still only at the beginning. Ecological restoration takes time. You can’t expect to transform a landscape in five years. What we’ve done is build the foundations, and now we need to keep building on them.”
For Marta, the experience of the past six years has also reinforced that many of the answers are already there. The challenge now is applying them much more widely.
“Sometimes people think the biodiversity and climate crises are so overwhelming that there’s nothing we can do. But we already know many of the solutions. We know how to restore ecosystems, improve coexistence with wildlife and build more resilient landscapes. We don’t need to keep trying to find the solutions. We need to implement them, and we need to do it much faster and at a much larger scale.”
To find out more about the Greater Côa Valley, visit their project page. This article was written as part of a series for Restoration Works, an ambitious communications campaign celebrating the achievements of the first seven projects supported by the Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme.
This article was written by Iona Haines, Communications and Network Coordinator, Endangered Landscapes & Seascapes Programme.
