Traditional landscape management and rotational grazing: dependence on landscape conectivity in Trás-os-Montes (Portugal)
Artigo de Conferência
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resumo
The rural heritage associated with landscape – species, varieties, breeds, tools, and
many other goods and services – had their origin and justification in the demands of rural
communities and their efforts to adapt to and/or to make available natural resources. On
the other hand, traditional rotational grazing has been a dispersal and gene flow vector
for many plants at landscape scale. This work considers the relationship between the
agriculture/woodland edge and the wooded patches with the shepherding rotational
system in a rural community.
The analysis in the last fifty years shows a progression to simplification of the landscape
and abandonment. The replacement of arable fields by chestnuts and olive orchards as
well as forest plots has menacing the connectivity needed for sheep and goat shepherding
on fallows, hedgerows, and woods. The declining of oaks, ash, poplar, alder, walnut and
others wooded structures needed for the stay and/or as the alternative forage source is
threatening the shepherding flows. Alternatively, meadows used by cattle are also used by
sheep and goats.
These new landscape dynamics constitute a major threat to keep the traditional
rotational shepherding systems. The best performance of non-native sheep and goat
breeds in stabled systems could replace the traditional grazing systems and breeds what
collapse the species dispersal and gene flow process. We list the landscape processes and
the endangered structures and recommend possible ways to support them.
