Restoring Gredos

Vegetation

Rewilding does not seek to impose a particular type of vegetation, but to allow the landscape to evolve with increasing autonomy, in balance with a fully functioning ecosystem. Our aim is not to preserve a fixed snapshot of the land, but to restore the ecological processes that allow vegetation to organise and change without depending constantly on human intervention.

Three major vegetation components coexist today in Northgrippian Park. The first consists of centuries-old Spanish oaks, living witnesses to the history of the landscape. The second includes diverse shrublands and grasslands, home to numerous plants, insects, small vertebrates, and other organisms. Together, both form a heterogeneous mosaic that holds much of the ecological value of the mountain savanna.

For these two components, we do not propose major direct interventions. We hope that the return of wildlife will restore its self-regulating role: that herbivores will consume grasses and shrubs, help create clearings, disperse seeds, and contribute to maintaining a diverse and dynamic landscape. The future structure of this vegetation should not follow a rigid design, but emerge from the interaction between plants, animals, water, soil, and fire. We will launch a new line of scientific research to better understand the ecological dynamics and natural history of this mountain savanna. Among other approaches, we will study tree age and growth through dendrochronology, the functional traits that may distinguish oaks adapted to open environments, vegetation responses in herbivore-exclusion plots, and the effects of small prescribed burns. This research will help reconstruct how this landscape formed and persisted, identify the processes that threaten it today, and guide its conservation on a solid scientific basis.

The third component consists of cluster pine plantations, artificially established during the 1960s. Their situation is different. Many of these pine stands were planted on terraces created through intensive forestry techniques, such as terracing and deep subsoiling, which profoundly altered the terrain and soil. Around the archaeological sites, they introduce a type of vegetation that is foreign to the cultural landscape inhabited by Neolithic communities, the Vettones, and later the shepherds. This makes the historical character of the land harder to read and hinders the conservation and interpretation of its archaeological and cultural heritage. In addition, far fewer plant and animal species find suitable habitat beneath the dense pine canopies. The accumulation of biomass and fuel also creates conditions that may increase the intensity and spread of major wildfires.

For these reasons, our approach to them is deliberately active: we propose the gradual removal of pine plantations from the core intervention area, followed by the spontaneous recovery of local vegetation, always supported by scientific planning, administrative authorisation, and ecological monitoring.