Pastoralism is a traditional and extensive livestock farming activity, practised in mountainous areas in particular. This form of breeding enables the development of territories with low agronomic value, difficult to access or non-mechanisable, and thus to maintain an economic activity in these areas. Pastoralism also has an interest in maintaining open landscapes, thus playing a role in both tourism development and biodiversity. However, the continuation of pastoral activity is currently threatened by several challenges: difficulties linked to the economic context, difficulties in organising grazing herds in the context of seasonal use of the territory, difficulties linked to climate change, difficulties linked to the pressure exerted by other users of pasture land, etc.
As part of the Oreka Mendian LIFE project, Euromontana is undertaking a survey to collect your opinion on pastoralism and permanent grasslands in the European mountains. For this purpose, we have launched an online questionnaire to collect 
information about sustainable management of mountain pasturelands in Europe, as well as a template to collect any good practices of management in permanent grasslands (it can be a local initiative you know of, a project, etc.).
The questionnaire comprises three different parts:
- The first section focuses on the most important functions of grasslands, the current challenges they face, the best ways to valorise grasslands production and the most useful conservation measures according to you;
- The second section aims at identifying the most important policy measures for pastoral activity at EU / regional and local level;
- The last section deals with large carnivores
If you are willing to share with us your opinion, public data sources and examples of the diversity of pasturelands and management systems in your area, do not hesitate to fill in the questionnaire before March 31st, 2018. The data collected will help us to carry out a study comparing sustainable management practices of permanent grasslands across Europe.
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To fill the online questionnaire, click here. It should not take more than 15 minutes to fill in that questionnaire and not all questions are compulsory. The survey will be available for two months, please participate before March 31st, 2018.
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The form to submit the information about good practices can be downloaded here. You may send your example back to this address: mosdale@euromontana.org.
Do not hesitate to share this questionnaire with relevant mountain actors so that we can collect more answers!
For more information, please contact the Secretariat.
