Abandonment of traditional uses in mountain areas: typological thinking versus hard data in the Cantabrian Mountains (NW Spain)

Conservation policies of the European Nature 2,000 network reflect an overarching concern about alleged negative effects of abandonment of traditional uses. In particular, the abandonment of livestock herding is widely assumed to be responsible of biodiversity decreases through habitat homogenization. However, those negative effects of land abandonment on biodiversity are neither straightforward nor the repeatedly assumed land abandonment has been always supported by hard data. We analyzed the evolution of cattle densities in the Cantabrian Mountains (NW Spain) in the past 20 years, and its relation with the decline in the occupancy of capercaillie leks. Instead of the widely-assumed decrease of livestock numbers, which has been already incorporated into landscape and wildlife management, we found an actual increase in cattle numbers. Those cattle numbers were negatively related to the presence of an endangered, distinctive population of capercaillie, a bird considered an umbrella species in mountain forest ecosystems. Thus our data do not support the alleged role of free-ranging livestock in the conservation of biodiversity. We consider that typological thinking in the relationship of socio-economic changes and biodiversity conservation should be replaced by hard data and consideration of ecosystem naturalness.