Rewilding Spain is using large herbivores in a landscape-scale restoration initiative spanning parts of Guadalajara, Cuenca and Teruel. The Sistema Ibérico Sur project covers a territory of 850,000 hectares, although the foundation says its direct work is concentrated on selected sites rather than the entire area.
From 2022 to 2025, the foundation devoted more than €4.5 million to experimental trials and other conservation measures. Most of the funding came from private sources and philanthropists outside Spain, including the British Endangered Landscapes programme, a foundation associated with Cartier and the Netherlands-based Rewilding Europe.
The project’s animals include 70 tauros, 49 Serrano horses, 47 Pottoka horses, 39 Przewalski’s horses and 10 bison. The Przewalski’s horses, brought from recovery projects in Hungary and France, graze in an oak woodland near Villanueva de Alcorón. The bison are kept at a separate site in El Recuenco, while tauros and Serrano horses share a large enclosure in Mazarete.
Rewilding Spain describes the bison work as a controlled field study, rather than a straightforward release, to examine how the animals affect Iberian ecosystems. Researchers from the universities of the Basque Country, Manchester and Aarhus are involved. The foundation’s stated aim is to restore ecological processes over a 20-year period by bringing back large herbivores that can graze on excess vegetation and create more open, varied landscapes.
In Mazarete, 59 tauros live alongside Serrano horses on land affected by a major wildfire in 2005. The animals are intended to help manage dense shrub growth. Tauros are cattle bred to resemble the extinct aurochs, and 28 births have been recorded at the site. The bison herd in El Recuenco has also had a calf.
The foundation says it now works directly on 30,000 hectares, paying for grazing rights on some land under agreements lasting as long as 20 years. In El Recuenco, the municipality’s mayor says the animals could help with forest management while bringing jobs and visitors to a small community. Rewilding Spain also supports local tourism businesses and other conservation efforts, including black vulture reintroduction work led by the regional government and the release of rabbits in preparation for a possible return of the Iberian lynx.
According to the foundation’s director, Mara Zamora, the herbivores are a practical option in areas where extensive livestock farming has largely disappeared. She says the animals can generally survive without supplementary feed or intensive care, while the project does not oppose traditional livestock farming. The initiative faces legal and practical challenges: Spanish rules treat the large herbivores as livestock, requiring individual veterinary checks that can be difficult to carry out. The foundation is considering becoming a zoological facility so it can work under requirements for wild fauna.
Sources: El País Sociedad.