Sheep production and conservation of wild birds in birds special protection areas in North East of Spain

Abstract

In the framework of the directive 2009/147/EC of the European Parliament some areas of the north east of Spain had been classified as ‘Birds Special Protection Areas’ (BSPA, ZEPA in Spanish). In this semiarid region wild birds share the space with agriculture and livestock production (mainly cereals and sheep). Local administrations are still developing the laws that should follow the livestock producer in order to maintain this BSPA. The topic of this study was to evaluate the inside BSPA natural resources used by the livestock farms and to obtain on farm indicators to evaluate the effect of the future regulations of use of BSPA resources in sustainability of sheep farms. Six sheep farms (half with and intensive and half with extensive reproductive system) in the area affected by BSPA were studied within the framework of sustainability analysis MESMIS. The information based on personal surveys was related with technical, economic and social issues. Focusing on results related with direct use of natural resources grazing represents between a 30% to a 81% of the total flock requirements. For some farms the grazing resources inside the BSPA represents up to 46% the flock maintenance requirements. Concerning MESMIS indicators, the different use of natural resources in the farms leads to different levels of environmental and economic sustainability. As a conclusion regulations for farms inside BSPA should take into account the need to use natural resources in order to maintain or increase farm sustainability levels. This is especially relevant when the landscape need for maintaining the birds that use this BSPA, fallow fields, depends on the human maintenance through livestock and crop production.