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Celebration of the B Day in wolf and livestock guardian dog territories

The celebration of B Day – International Biodiversity Day – gains particular importance in 2010, declared by the United Nations as the International Year of Biodiversity. One of the main challenges to biodiversity conservation is the risk of extinction facing many large predators, such as the Iberian wolf, threatened with extinction in Portugal. But biodiversity also includes the diversity of our domestic animal breeds, such as goats, sheep and dogs, which exist in rural mountain ecosystems. A walk through the Serra do Alvão is the ideal pretext to observe all the animal and plant diversity found there, where flocks of wild goats coexist, guarded by watchful Cão de Castro Laboreiro livestock guardian dogs protecting them from wolf attacks. The Livestock Guardian Dog Programme of Grupo Lobo was one of the highlights of the walk, with participants observing some of the integrated dogs and talking with shepherds about the wolves still seen in the region. This walk organised by Montes de Encanto involved around 20 people who, with the help of specialists, worked to identify and record all the bird, insect and mammal species they observed during the route. The data were then integrated into the database of the Biodiversidade para Todos project website.

https://www.biodiversity4all.org/