Recovery of the Bearded Vulture: biodiversity and grazing, an alliance for survival in the 21st century. Picos de Europa

Experience the reintroduction of the Bearded Vulture and its close relationship with traditional livestock management.

The anthropized landscape of the Cantabrian coast, and particularly of the Picos de Europa area, is the heritage of a traditional activity that has its roots in a remote past, preserving a tangible and intangible heritage of unquestionable richness.
The human being, in its natural integration in the harsh mountain environments of UNESCO as a Biosphere Reserve. A territory in which culture is articulated in a rational use of natural resources contributing to its maintenance and traditionally oriented to sustainability, in a way that collaborates in its complexity, participating and generating a rich biodiversity.
The rich ecosystem from which people and livestock obtain their sustenance is intertwined with a cultural heritage, which, after going through various crises and substantial changes, is currently facing an uncertain future.

If it was the mountain livestock and transterminance that, since time immemorial, allowed the coexistence with such an emblematic animal as the bearded vulture, it is also true that the changes in management and the irruption of new techniques and products in the same livestock world led to its extinction in the Picos at the end of the last century.

Currently, thanks to science and the application of its techniques, organizations such as the Foundation for the Conservation of the Bearded Vulture (FCQ) have managed to get new pairs of Bearded Vultures to breed again in these mountains.

In the course of this adventure, a certain way of working is recognized, which is indispensable for its reestablishment: a mountain breeding that, for many different reasons, is currently on the verge of extinction.

What does this experience consist of?

The activity takes place during one morning, in collaboration with the FCQ.

1.- Guided visit by FCQ technicians to the Bearded Vulture Mountain Interpretation Center, located in Benia de Onís, where the main characteristics of the species, the ecosystem of Picos de Europa, the interaction of extensive small livestock farming in the Park and the process of reintroduction of the species, starting from the existing populations in the Pyrenees and its release in Picos de Europa, are explained.

Visit to the National Park of Picos de Europa, reading of the landscape and observation of the ecosystem in which the activity of reintroduction of the Bearded Vulture takes place. Paying special attention to the ethnographic elements that facilitate the reintroduction of the species and the benefits for the species, but also for the complex natural and cultural ecosystem and its complicated balance.

The experience can be extended with a visit to cheese dairies in the valley.

The visits can be developed in the order that the weather and the availability of FCQ members advise.