📋 Tender Overview
Start Date: 30/09/2021
End Date: 31/12/2026
Total Budget: 2,406,410 €
EU Contribution: 1,804,807 €
PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
Mediterranean Taxus baccata woods is a Natura 2000 priority habitat (9580*) of an extremely reduced extension with severe conservation problems. Yew (Taxus baccata) woods are relict formations that are in severe decline all over their distribution range. The European Environment Agency shows that its current conservation status, structures and functions and future prospect in the Mediterranean biogeographical region is U2 (‘Unfavourable-bad’). In the Valencian region, yew woods are located in the highest Mediterranean mountains, occupying the wettest ravines and the bases of slopes facing north, often in rocky areas. These forests barely exceed one hectare and, for the most part, they are interpreted as the remains of bigger yew communities, progressively reduced and destroyed by a combination of human actions and climate change. The current main threats are: 1) very small, dispersed and fragmented habitat spots; 2) low seed productivity and seedling recruitment;3) herbivory and trampling by both domestic and wild ruminants; 4) climate change, and 5) wildfires. The small cover and fragmented distribution are the result of historic human activities over recent centuries, like soil transformation into agriculture and rangeland, forest uses and overgrazing. Until the 1980s, eliminating the understory and non-productive woody species as competence to the productive species was a common forest management practice. In addition, the abandonment of marginal mountainous lands during the past century allowed a fast development of the forest cover, generating very high densities that competed for resources with the yew habitat and increased forest fire risk.
OBJECTIVES
The main objective of the LIFE Teixeres project is to improve the conservation status of the ‘Mediterranean Taxus baccata woods’ habitat and its resilience capacity to the main threats. The project will take place in 10 Natura 2000 sites where the habitat type is present, distributed in 84 spots and with an extension of 130 ha.
To achieve these targets, the project will:
Increase habitat cover of small yew stands through reintroductions and/or reinforcements of existing populations to establish the minimum viable population in the most compromised localities;
Reduce habitat fragmentation by implementing actions in suitable sites (following historical data, current distribution and ecological ranges of the species, distance from the nearest natural populations);
Reduce competition through forest management. Many of the sites have been abandoned following human management and colonised by pioneer tree species. The reduction of their density and biomass will have as a secondary benefit the increase of forest fire resistance;
Passive defence measures may consist in reduction of herbivory and trampling of big ruminants by
