Eco123 Revista da Economia e Ecologia
Garrano horses and Maronesa cattle (resembling an aurochs), as well as griffon vultures and many other wild or semi-wild animals live in a privately-owned, open nature reserve of 856 hectares, which is also classified as a bird sanctuary and a UNESCO World Heritage Archaeological Site. The caves along the banks of the river are home to 20,000-year-old rock paintings from the Stone Age… Faia Brava belongs to the Transhumance and Nature Association (ATN) based in Castelo Rodrigo. This year it is celebrating its 25th anniversary.
I was one of the first foreign visitors to inaugurate the Grande Rota Vale do Côa, the long-distance hiking trail which runs through this nature reserve. That was in October 2015, when Rewilding Portugal was in the early stages of its development. The question I asked myself afterwards was this: would the concept of rewilding have been pursued if this second component, that of nature tourism, did not even exist? So, are they doing their thing (nature conservation) for the sake of it, or is their purpose just to present a tourist attraction, to own nature and its wild inhabitants as a marketing tool? To date, no one has been able to give me a credible answer to this question.
Along the river Côa, which rises near the village of Foios in the Serra da Malcata in the county of Sabugal and which, over time, evolves more and more from a mountain stream with trout to a real river with very different faces, over a length of 224 km to the Foz da Coa (Vila Nova) in the Douro, is accompanied by a hiking trail that takes the pedestrian over a long distance into the diversity of nature and later releases it again at the mouth to the Douro River. After Sabugal and after the dam, the Côa meanders slowly through a floodplain landscape, lined with willows on the banks and merging into a river where beaches invite walkers to swim in Rapoula do Côa… The Refugio no Campo in the Quinta Vale Furtado is the most pleasant accommodation I can remember. A freshly squeezed orange juice on arrival sweetens my stay. A breakfast fit for a pedestrian who walks 25 km a day is served the next morning. Then, with sandwiches in my rucksack, I head further north: Rewilding.
I come across the first turtles in the river. They are lying lazily on the bank and sunbathing. A footbridge crosses the river. What a luxury! This is a river on which no goods are transported back and forth by boat, because the mass of water that previously flowed quite slowly is now flowing faster and faster towards a waterfall and the River Côa overcomes the differences in height in cascades. I spend hours wending my way down the valley, following the river. I reach Almeida and then Faia Brava. Now, looking back, I ask myself what fire safety measures are being taken in this nature reserve? After all, a forest fire can break out anywhere in Portugal and then what? Is there a team of fire specialists who are trained to prevent fires, extinguish fires and create firebreaks, and do they have any planes to pour water over the forest fires…? Because where rewilding is practised, the animals should also be afforded protection from the real dangers that they are exposed to and from which their only option is to flee.
On the top of a rocky hill of an 80-hectare farm in the southern part of the great Côa Valley, near the Serra da Malcata, the goatherd Albano Alavedra places the bodies of two recently slaughtered goats. He then withdraws to watch the inevitable spectacle that will ensue. He is the first farmer to receive a permit from the government to feed dead animals to the vultures.
It doesn’t take long for a flock of griffon vultures to gather in the sky. Individually or in pairs, they begin their descent. Soon a small group of birds have gathered together on the dusty ground and are fighting over the carcasses. Eventually, only a few scattered bones will be left. Here the cycle of rewilding has come full circle.
This gathering of vultures is not just a captivating spectacle of scavenging birds, but a significant moment when the vultures return to the local landscape. After five years of waiting, and with the continued support of the Rewilding Portugal team, the owner of the herd of goats, Senhor Albano, finally received permission from the government to leave animal carcasses in the landscape for free, through the legal establishment of an APAAN (Private Area for the Feeding of Necrophagous Birds).
Since January of this year, he is no longer forced to remove the carcasses of dead animals from his farm, which costs him time and money. Instead, he can let the vultures do the work for him.
+ Information:
https://rewilding-portugal.com/ and https://granderotadocoa.
