Objectives
Project
Achieving biodiversity conservation and forest fire prevention through an innovative instrument: integrated silvopastoral management.
LIFE Montserrat project is located in Montserrat Mountain and its surroundings (province of Barcelona). The project area extends to 32.000 ha and it is mainly forested (64%).
Montserrat is an emblematic site for several reasons:
- High natural wealth, with a significant portion of the project area included in the Natura 2000 network-
- The mountain holds an important religious, spiritual and cultural place of pilgrimage: the Abbey of Montserrat, a very popular site both for local population and tourists.
- Stands out as a singular and unique landscape.
Fuel-volume accumulation, climate change and the disappearance of crops and traditional forest activities are among the main causes of the high forest fire risk in the project area. As a result, some major forest fires have occurred in the area during the last decades.
The main objectives of the project are:
01
The development of ecosystem-based measures to increase resilience and stability of forests against fires in order to improve the prevention of wildfires in the Montserrat Mountain and surroundings by creating and/or maintaining strategic areas that will prevent the spread, facilitate the extinction and decrease the intensity and extension of wildfires and its risk.
02
The contribution to biodiversity conservation and improvement in the Montserrat area, with habitats and species of high conservation value included in the Birds and Habitats Directives. In particular, the project seeks to contribute to the conservation of 20 fauna species of special conservation concern, including Bonelli’s eagle, which lives in the project area by the maintenance and restoration of some priority habitats, and improve the habitat of over 140 species protected by the international, national or regional legislation through open habitats recovery.
03
Biodiversity conservation by increasing connectivity through the creation of a mosaic of scrub, natural grasslands and forests that will link two Natura 2000 sites (Montserrat-Roques Blanques-Riu Llobregat and Sant Llorenç del Munt i l’Obac).
