On a Slow Cyclist journey to Portugal’s Côa Valley, guests discover the amazing rewilding and regeneration projects taking place in Faia Brava nature reserve. We spoke to the organisation’s director António Araújo to find out more.
‘This whole landscape is absolutely wonderful. It’s fantastic to be in Europe and yet you feel you’re in Africa!’ When António Araújo returned home to Portugal after living in Mauritania for thirty years, it was the wildness of Faia Brava which attracted him. A mosaic of landscapes – olive and almond groves, cork oaks, Montpellier maples and Cade junipers – and steep granite cliffs dropping to a winding river, where eagles soar and rare vultures can be spotted.
Founding Faia Brava
Faia Brava was founded twenty-five years ago, with the aim of conserving endangered species of fauna and flora in these landscapes blessed with unusually rich biodiversity. Starting with just a couple of hundred hectares, land was gradually acquired from 140 private landowners, and in 2010, Portugal’s first private protected area was born. Faia Brava now covers a thousand hectares, roughly following the lower course of the Côa River in the northeast of Portugal. As well as many species of migratory birds, roe deer, otters and even the rare wildcat, there are now around 50 pairs of Griffon vultures and two pairs of Egyptian vultures, as well as Golden eagle, Bonelli’s eagle, and black storks. It’s a region ripe for the reappearance of the Iberian lynx and wolf. But first, a complex and subtle process of natural regeneration needs to take place.
Rewilding and the Threat of Fire
‘This is not pure rewilding,’ António explains. ‘We don’t want nature to take its course on its own all over the place.’ His policy is not only to introduce bison, but to favour the region’s existing typical fauna: ‘a community of species which have adapted to this landscape. So for example, we have holm oaks, growing like bushes everywhere, but we help them to grow faster by pruning the lower branches allowing the stronger ones to become tall trees, which won’t be such easy prey to fire.’
Fire is the big threat in this semi-arid region, where the rainfall is low and where summer temperatures often reach over 40 degrees. ‘We have to survey the property every day to make sure that no one is setting fire to it,’ says António. “We’re building huge water tanks for helicopters to use, to mitigate the impact of fire if it arrives.’
Managing Faia Brava as a single entity was key to this regeneration. When this land had 140 separate owners, António explains, each had their own way of managing the land, and inevitably it involved burning forest to make way for grazing sheep and cows. In fact, for 30,000 years humans have been shaping Faia Brava for their needs: cutting down forest, setting fires – controlled and uncontrolled – to promote the growth of pasture. They have pre-historic rock engravings and cave paintings to prove it!
Vital Species
Planting trees is key to the regeneration project. This year alone, António and his small team of volunteers will have planted 7,500 trees across Faia Brava and collected 40,000 acorns of indigenous oak species. ‘But it’s difficult for young trees to survive in these conditions,’ António says. How best to sow them? This became a puzzling mystery when biologists discovered that the strongest saplings grew from the middle of the rocks. ‘But who takes acorns into the rock crevices? Someone has to carry them! We have no birds of any species that do that work. So who? Finally we worked out it was mice, storing acorns for food in winter. So now, we copy the mice!’
Rabbits are vital, too. In order to encourage avian predators like the Golden and Bonelli’s eagle, António and his small staff are building up the rabbit population across the reserve. ‘Some 50 years ago there would be rabbits all over the place, but rabbit populations have decreased enormously through disease. So we are planting wheat, rye and barley crops just so that the prey has food.’ Similarly, pigeons– formerly kept as a valuable source of protein (even the pigeon guano was used as fertiliser in the fields and vineyards) – are being encouraged, which is fantastic for peregrine falcon. Now you can visit a photographic shelter in Faia Brava to watch vultures feeding. Of course, this improvement in habitat benefits all kinds of animals, from invertebrates and insects to amphibians and reptiles. Those iconic species, the wolf and the lynx, may yet return to Faia Brava, António hopes.
If you’d like to discover the wild landscapes of Faia Brava in Portugal’s Côa Valley, enquire now for dates and more details.
