Why grazing matters for Mediterranean landscapes
In Spain, around 80% of agricultural land is devoted to livestock farming, and pastoralism has long been part of how rural communities manage forests, scrubland, and mountain pastures.
However, changes in agricultural practices, landscapes, and the growing risk of wildfires have created new threats for grazing and pastoralism. The challenge is no longer simply to preserve a traditional activity, but to adapt these practices to a new reality.
In Castilla y León, the use of fire to manage scrubland was historically widespread among livestock farmers. However, as grazing declined, vegetation accumulated, increasing the risk and severity of wildfires and making pastoral burnings more dangerous and becoming a risk for people and environment.
The scale of this challenge was particularly significant in Castilla y León. The region experienced between 1985 and 1999, around 2,000 forest fires a year, with an average of approximately 35,000 hectares burned annually, most of its brushland.
In 2002, with its Regional Forest Plan, and Silvopastoral Programme (V4), Castilla y León took a first step in analysing pastoral ecosystems and developing new management method, as integrating grazing with forestry and fire prevention activities.
Plan for Active Fire Prevention in Castilla y León, known as Plan 42 was established in response to this analysis and to apply active prevention oriented to the causes of wildfires, being one of its main aims to phase out the use of fire and replace it with mechanised vegetation management, supported by EAFRD funding.
It is rooted in an important premise:
In the areas where fire risk is connected to human activity and rural land management, prevention cannot rely only on technical or mechanical measures. It had to work with and for rural communities.
The programme therefore placed local experts in the areas most affected by fires.
- Their role was not simply to enforce new rules, but to understand how farmers and shepherds managed the landscape, build confidence and help develop safer alternatives to high-risk practices.
- Within its indirect-prevention approach, Plan 42 identified controlled and organised grazing as one of the tools of preventive silviculture.
The logic was practical. As extensive livestock farming declined in some areas, vegetation accumulated on hillsides, around villages and along roadsides. Grazing had traditionally helped keep this vegetation in check.
Mechanical clearing could provide an alternative where burning had previously been used, while organised grazing could maintain long-time results, particularly in terrain where machinery can be difficult or costly to use regularly.
In addition, grazing animals can maintain vegetation management across steep, remote and dispersed areas while simultaneously producing food and supporting rural livelihoods.
The Regional Pastoral Programme built on these experiences and helped formalise and scale up locally tested approaches.
The result was not a model in which farmers, their knowledge, responsibility and continued presence on the land became part of the solution.
Plan 42 aimed to change this type of management, phasing out the use of fire and replacing it with mechanised clearing. This was achieved through two approaches: creating a grant scheme for livestock farmers and working directly with farmers to involve them in the solutions.
Organising grazing at scale
The programme's success depended on more than grants. It built on traditional, well-rooted collective pastoral practices, while introducing clearer responsibilities and formal planning.
Farmers could carry out clearing themselves or through contractors, on private, communal or public land. Multiannual support encouraged them to maintain grazing and invest in their holdings.
The current Castilla y León silvopastoral scheme supports five-year plans and measures including clearing, pasture improvement, fencing, water points and livestock infrastructure.
Today, this approach is supported under the CAP Strategic Plan for Spain 2023–27 through intervention 6881.2, “Non-productive forestry investments for damage prevention and silviculture”, which includes support for silvopastoral actions.
The current scheme is co-financed by the European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development (EAFRD), with €35 million allocated to the 2023-27 period.
The 2026 call is expected to cover around 36,500 hectares of scrubland clearing and some 590 applications over its five annual implementation years.
At the same time, Castilla y León continues to complete payments for projects approved under the previous Rural Development Programme, with the final annual payment scheduled for 2027.
This support does not operate in isolation. The silvopastoral approach combines investment in vegetation management and basic infrastructure with organised grazing, helping farmers maintain the conditions needed for pastoralism to continue over time.
A silvopastoral plan provides a framework for managing each area, while collaboration with livestock associations, forest-owner associations and contractors provides additional support.
In areas where the incidence of wildfires was highest, one or more people were deployed, with a mixed background comprising technical expertise and social skills. These staff members, living and working in these rural areas, were able to build trust and secure the involvement of livestock farmers.
The field teams learned from farmers, helped them navigate applications and worked with them to design practical solutions. The approach also built on collective arrangements, while requiring clear commitments through contracts and silvopastoral planning.
From managing risk to reinventing partnership
In parts of Burgos, the approach is particularly telling.
The traditional use of pastoral burning was replaced by mechanical clearing, creating a feasible alternative for livestock farmers.
The reported improvements should not be attributed to grazing alone. They reflect a combination of:
- long-term local engagement, with technical teams working with livestock farmers over many years;
- mechanical clearing followed by grazing, allowing livestock to maintain reduced fuel loads;
- fencing and water infrastructure, making organised grazing practical; and
- community engagement, addressing the human causes of fire alongside vegetation management.
The important shift was that farmers were not simply identified as the source of a problem.
Other changes related to administrative regulation of extensive grazing, investigation about origin of fires, penalties for uncontrolled burnings including enclosing to grazing, or other aids for a more modern and professional pastoralism, including fencing, were also promoted and helped as a whole to make the change possible.
A specific high-risk practice was identified, an alternative was developed, and farmers became partners in putting that alternative into practice.
Making prevention viable for farmers
The programme recognises that wildfire prevention cannot be separated from farm viability.
Fencing, water points, access and livestock infrastructure are not simply environmental measures. They determine whether farmers can manage animals efficiently in remote areas and whether grazing can continue over the long term.
The programme combines wildfire prevention with practical infrastructure that supports the viability of livestock holdings. Its investments have included:
- 34,000 hectares of brush clearing
- 750 kilometres of fencing
- 270 drinking ponds
Support has also been provided at €25 per hectare per year, equivalent to approximately €25,000 per farm over five years. Total investment is reported at €2.9 million per year, or €23 million over six years.
EAFRD support therefore gives farmers a practical tool to improve their holdings while providing an alternative to using fire to control scrub. It can also help avoid the legal problems associated with inappropriate burning.
But the programme's economic dimension goes beyond infrastructure. Field staff worked with farmers on business viability, direct marketing, diversification and product quality, while encouraging greater recognition of the environmental and social value of extensive livestock farming.
Livestock farmers can rely on a tool (EAFRD funding) to make their farms more profitable; furthermore, they do not need to use fire to control scrub, which spares them potential legal problems.
Field staff went beyond infrastructure, working with farmers on business viability, direct marketing, diversification and product quality, while encouraging greater recognition of the environmental and social value of extensive livestock farming.
The principle is simple: if pastoralism is not economically viable, the landscape-management benefits it provides cannot be sustained.
A model for resilient landscapes
The challenge is shared across Europe.
Collective grazing systems have weakened in many rural areas, land access can be fragmented and younger generations may be reluctant to enter a difficult and uncertain profession.
Castilla y León suggests that reconnecting livestock farming with landscape management requires several things:
- Recognising livestock keepers as land managers, not only producers.
- Trusting farmers and giving them responsibility, supported by professional and landowner organisations.
- Investing in basic infrastructure such as water points, fencing, access and livestock facilities.
- Rebuilding collective grazing arrangements where traditional systems have weakened, with formal agreements and clear responsibilities.
- Using multiannual support, combining immediate fire-risk reduction with farm viability, training, generational renewal and market development.
- Targeting grazing through fire-risk mapping, so pastoral effort is concentrated where it can provide the greatest prevention value.
- Maintaining a sustained local technical presence, rather than relying only on short-term grant calls.
- Integrating extensive livestock farming into multifunctional forestry and agroforestry, alongside biodiversity, fire prevention and rural development.
These lessons also point to the importance of public services in rural areas.
Maintaining active landscapes requires people to remain there, and that depends on access, infrastructure, administrative support and viable businesses.
Some measures that may help include improving relations with the authorities, avoiding bureaucratic obstacles and assisting livestock farmers with applications; working to improve the quality of products from extensive livestock farming; boosting livestock farmers' self-esteem, so that they feel proud of their trade and of the environmental and social benefits that result from their continuing work in the countryside.
The wider lesson is that farmers and shepherds are not simply beneficiaries of wildfire-prevention policy. They are landscape managers and partners in prevention.
Plan 42 connected their knowledge and continued presence on the land with forestry expertise, public funding, mechanical clearing, infrastructure and organised planning.
By adapting traditional pastoral systems rather than simply replacing them, Castilla y León has shown how rural livelihoods, active landscape management and wildfire prevention can reinforce one another.
Further information
- Forest Protection Analysis
- Documental Montes y Pastos. Reflexiones ganaderas sobre medio ambiente en Castilla y León - Parte 1: Documentary about the relationship between livestock farming and the environment in Castilla y León, funded by the Regional Ministry of Agriculture and Livestock of the Government of Castilla y León in 2004 and produced by INCA Medio.
- Documental Montes y Pastos. Reflexiones ganaderas sobre medio ambiente en Castilla y León - Parte 2.
- Paisajes ganaderos de Castilla y León - Parte 1
- Paisajes ganaderos de Castilla y León - Parte 2