Unidad de Cultura Científica y de la Innovación

As part of the CI Montado-Dehesa project, several organizations and research teams from Spain and Portugal have come together to improve the conservation of Dehesa ecosystems (areas of mediterranean woodland transformed by humans to provide pasture for livestock) in the Iberian Peninsula.

The project, which is part of the Spain–Portugal cross-border cooperation program Interreg (POCTEP), launched four pilot initiatives or living labs — in the Sierra Morena Natural Park of Seville, Monfragüe National Park in Extremadura, and the regions of Évora and Mértola in Portugal — to measure the on-the-ground impact of various best practices aimed at enhancing dehesa conservation.

In Spain, dehesa management has long suffered from the effects of inadequate agricultural policies, which encourage livestock intensification and result in grazing densities that undermine sustainable dehesa management.

A key factor is how subsidies from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) are granted — based on pasture area and livestock numbers, up to a certain limit. “But that limit isn’t actually tied to what the land can truly support,” explains Vicente Rodríguez Estévez, lead researcher on the project at the University of Córdoba, from the Department of Animal Production.

This has led some farmers to maximize livestock numbers in order to receive more subsidies. “We estimate that currently there may be three to four times more livestock than any given area can sustainably support,” says Rodríguez Estévez.

This overgrazing severely impacts the dehesa, degrading pastures and preventing the regeneration of trees. “One of the key indicators of a healthy dehesa is the number of young trees per hectare,” Rodríguez Estévez points out. “Livestock don’t allow young trees to grow,” he says, “and over time, tree cover diminishes, simplifying the ecosystem.”

Extreme temperatures and droughts are accelerating tree mortality and compounding the problem — but land management is equally critical. For example, the traditional practice of multi-year rotational grazing, which allowed the land time to recover, is now virtually nonexistent. “These rotations used to last up to 20 years,” Rodríguez Estévez notes. “There wasn’t a fixed timeline, but it gave the tree cover time to regenerate.”

In addition, the focus on cattle — which remain in the dehesa year-round — is creating issues of overgrazing and soil erosion. “Cattle leave the soil bare in summer,” he says, “and that affects the quality of pastures in the following spring.”

To address these challenges, the researchers at the University of Córdoba (UCO) have analyzed how good practices could be better recognized and rewarded through CAP subsidies — shifting the system to one based on results or specific management practices.

To support this goal, they’ve designed a new method to evaluate the quality of dehesa conservation in a simple, practical way. It uses key indicators such as biodiversity, pasture productivity, and tree management. The method has been validated in the project’s living labs, particularly at the Sierra Morena location (Seville).

Currently available methods for assessing dehesa health are more scientific and complex, requiring multiple field visits and analyses — making them costly for governments to use in inspections or subsidy distribution. “If more money is spent on monitoring and inspections than on paying for good practices, the funds meant to support conservation are wasted,” Rodríguez Estévez emphasizes.

In contrast, the proposed method by the researchers at UCO is much simpler. It reduces sampling and analysis time, lowers inspection costs, and enables objective assessments of land management.

The project’s goal is to measure the effectiveness of these practices, highlight their value, and show how these practices correlate with the actual conservation state of the dehesa, when it is measured in the most comprehensive way possible.

As part of the initiative, the research team is also offering free short courses on these best practices, available through the website of the project’s coordinating partner, AndaNatura.