The impact of human beings on different ecosystems is huge. Throughout our history, we have changed ecosystems in ways that have led to biodiversity loss, increased the chances of natural disasters such as fires or disconnected humankind from nature.
Diego and Manuel, enthusiastic conservationists, are going to show us a new conservation approach to restore the damage and prepare our ecosystem for a future where climate change is more present. They will guide us through the Alto Tajo Natural Park and its surroundings, introducing us to their work, which is regenerating the region thanks to the introduction of wild horses. This also revitalizes a rural area—one of the most sparsely populated in the world, with a population density similar to some regions of Siberia—a territory heavily affected by rural exodus.
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Banner image: Przewalski’s horse. Image ©Juan Maza.
Transcript
Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.
They must be in the area on the right. Here we are at that little dot,
and this is the collar. We are about 25 to 30 meters away from the herd.
Why are we bringing these animals back? Wild horses have always been
part of the Iberian Peninsula fauna. At a certain point in prehistory,
the number of these animals began to decline, due to hunting and
competition with domestic animal. Once horses were domesticated, wild
horses were displaced and eventually disappeared. Diego, where do these
horses come from? They originally come from the Mongolian steppe, which
is where it was discovered that a population of Eurasian wild horses
still remained. Since they were found in the steppe, it was assumed they
were steppe animals. But what we’re seeing here is that they adapt
perfectly to this Mediterranean dehesa woodland. My job is to monitor
the animals. We watch them from a distance with binoculars to see how
they are doing. How they behave, how the herds change, how they feed,
and let them be. We don’t intervene so that they remain wild. The most
obvious change, is that by eating this tall grass, which is less
palatable to other species, a new, much more diverse grass has emerged
underneath. In those pastures that were hardly used deer have returned,
wild boars have returned. We have also seen, for example, the return of
coprophagous [dung-eating] insects. The dung beetle, for example, which
is an animal that was rarely seen. We have several objectives One of
them is its own conservation, as it is an endangered animal. Another is
to recover all these processes we are talking about and also to help
boost the local economy. For sale. There are people who come
specifically to see the horses. And there are companies that have
specialized in showing the horses to tourists who are visiting. I was
looking for a chance to move back to my hometown, but there weren’t any.
Because my mind after 20 years there… I found out that some people
called Rewilding Spain
had arrived here. They started advertising a job opening and I applied
for one … I had a few interviews, they gave me the position, and here I
am. As the years went by,
the towns started declining the factories that were here,
the jobs that existed, all began closing, and people started leaving.
And now there are no young people. In fact, the school is only staying
open because there are four children. As soon as those children go to
high school, the school will probably close. Now we’re going to the
Solanillos Dehesa, another of the natural grazing areas we have here as
part of the Southern Iberian System initiative. With the difference that
the area we’re going to suffered a major fire in 2005. Thirteen thousand
hectares of mature forest were burned, and it was also a disaster on a
human level because 11 people working to extinguish the fire died. It
was a very hard blow for the region. And what we see here is that the
pine forest is already regenerating. And we can see the work that our
large herbivores are doing. Maintaining open areas. What they do is
break the continuity at the time so that if there’s another fire, it can
be extinguished more easily and not reach the devastating proportions
that that one did. Seeing how the horses change the landscape year after
year in the direction we expected is very satisfying. I believe that
this will be the future.
