Natural Grazing
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Increase area under natural grazing
Improving
Iberian Highlands
Spain
Problem: Land abandonment has led to loss of extensive livestock grazing across large areas of the landscape. The absence of large herbivores brings with it the loss of key ecological processes such as herbivory, trampling, and nutrient cycling and connectivity. The loss of these processes leads to problems such as spread of scrubland, homogenisation of the landscape, and an increase in the extent and intensity of wildfires.
Action: Free-living populations of large herbivores are being reintroduced into the project area to reinstate a natural grazing regime. The herbivores being introduced are Przewalski’s, Serrano and Pottoka wild horses, and Tauros (a breed of cattle specifically bred to resemble the now-extinct aurochs).
Indicator: The area available to free-living wild herbivores and their use of the Iberian Highlands landscape will indicate the success of species translocations and their growing impact on the landscape.
Methods
The area under natural grazing will be assessed as the area of land where grazing rights have been secured and free-living wild horses and Tauros have been released. The use of the landscape by the animals will be assessed using GPS-tracking devices to monitor the movements of the animals, ground-truthed with observations from the herd manager. GIS software will be used to produce heatmaps illustrating the spatial dynamics of the released herbivores.
Results
The baseline area under natural grazing in 2022 was 0 ha. No free-living large herbivores were present in the target sites. By June 2024, the Iberian Highlands had secured grazing rights over and area of more than 8500 ha, with large herbivores already grazing 1430 ha of this. (Fig. 1; Table 1).
Figure 1: Iberian Highlands landscape boundary, showing the four areas with grazing rights as of June 2024.
Data on the use of the landscape by the animals are still being analysed. An example of preliminary GPS tracking data from one of the grazing areas is shown below (Fig. 2).
Figure 2: Map showing relative activity (blue = lower activity; red = higher activity) of Przewalski’s horses within the grazed area of Villanueva, during a 21-day period. The dashed red line denotes the fenced area.
Interpretation
The herbivores are not yet grazing across the whole of the areas where grazing rights have been secured. The area that the reintroduced herbivores are able to access and graze is gradually being increased as the number of animals increases and secure fencing is put in place.
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