Restauración del paisaje de la montaña española con ganadería: Un ensayo en la Cordillera Cantábrica combinando pastoreo de caprino y poda de matorrales

Abstract

Depopulation in Spanish mountain areas and livestock decrease, which traditionally grazed pasture lands, have favored an uncontrolled expansion of shrubs and, consequently, a significant increase of the fuel material and the fire risk, and the decrease of the landscape diversity. In the Cantabrian Mountain, Cytisus scoparius shows a large capacity to colonize abandoned lands and at present it is covering large areas, which were grazed before the abandonment. This paper analyzes the role of goats grazing, in combination with Cytisus scoparius pruning, to control the shrub spread, and how these actions are affecting the landscape configuration and fragmentation. The analysis was based on experimental plots, which combined two stocking rates: single (4.5 goats/ha/year) and double (9 goats/ha/year).The results show a small capacity of the sole application of pruning to limit the shrub expansion, since three years after the plants recovered the 90% of the initial coverage. The combination of pruning and single stocking rate delays the advance of shrubs, but in four years recover the 70.6% of its height and the 64% of its length. More effective is the double rate, as it allows controlling the expansion of Cytisus scoparius , since four years after the experiment the shrub branches only grew 10 cm in an average. Double stocking rate also preserves a more fragmented landscape than the single rate; it produces a land structure characterized by small patches, which is more interesting from an environmental point of view.