Municipality Support
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Increase number of municipalities supporting rewilding
Improving
Iberian Highlands
Spain
Problem: A large percentage of the project landscape is publicly owned. The main landowners are municipalities and they also manage user rights on that land (grazing, forest management and hunting), supervised by regional governments. To enhance biodiversity, ecosystem services and sustainable economies across the landscape, it is necessary to work with municipalities to improve management of these areas.
Action: Rewilding Spain will sign agreements with municipalities to enhance the sustainable management of the landscape, for example on natural grazing, old-growth forest protection and ecotourism development. Municipalities also have a key role in building support and facilitating relationships with other stakeholders in the landscape.
Indicator: The number of municipalities within the project landscape that support, co-produce or promote rewilding activities will indicate the level of support for rewilding generally in the landscape.
Signing a forest reserve agreement with Vega del Codorno municipality. Photo: Rewilding Spain.
Mayors from Cuenca municipalities visited the Villanueva grazing area to see what rewilding looks like in practice. Photo: Rewilding Spain.
Methods
Records will be kept of the number of organisations or stakeholders that support rewilding activities. The action does not need to be implemented by the municipality itself, but may be carried out by any organisation or stakeholder within the municipality. Data will be collected on both the number of municipalities where actions are being carried out directly by the project team and also the number of municipalities where other organisations are carrying out related actions. Data will be collected and reported annually.
Results
The baseline of municipalities supporting rewilding at the start of the project in 2022 was 0. An agreement with one municipality was signed in 2023, and in 2024 agreements were signed with a further four municipalities (Fig. 1).
Figure 1: Cumulative number of municipalities which have signed agreements to support rewilding.
Partners
