The breeders working in the Gran Sasso and Laga Mountains territory pay the logistic and functional consequences connected with the distance between the areas used as pastures and the structures to host their livestock.

The few or even lacking facilities in the grazing areas - such as drinking troughs, shelters and pens - besides making breeders' job more difficult they also affect the flows and the number of livestock living in the grasslands during the breeding season. Such situation leads many breeders to leave the grazing activities, and many others to an uneven use of the territory and a concentration of a high number of heads of cattle in small areas because they are more favorable or closer to the built-up areas.

In the overgrazed areas the erosion phenomena and those caused by the excessive soil treading - which cause often irreversible damages to the grass surface - are evident, as well as the well known consequences of the pastures abandonment, which cause the excessive growth of sometimes invasive tree and shrub species that degrade this area's nature value. Another serious consequence is the loss of environments where important wild animals able to adapt to live in the grasslands can settle in, such as mammals, birds and insects.

Since the project action considers grazing as an activity of primary importance, and the breeders as an ideal partner for the purposes of safeguarding the territory, it provides the supply of proper facilities in order to support and foster the uniform and balanced grazing, and the long-term conservation of highly important habitats.

Development of the action

In December 2015 the farms have been supplied with the materials for the realization of several enclosure typologies: that of a small lake, with the double result of safeguarding both the animals and the water environment, 6 delivery fences for bovines, one anti-cliff fence for bovines and horses, one experimental grazing fence for horses, 43 electrified fences for the building of night fences for sheep.

The breeders have also received 38 mobile structures to be used as shelters for lambs, 16 herding dogs for sheep and 3 for bovines.

The supply of such instruments has a double goal: creating work conditions that make grazing activities possible even in far away and fringe areas, and leading the breeders to collaborate for the conservation of the involved areas.
The project will therefore help foster the grazing activities, in order to safeguard one of the most ancient activities in the whole area, centuries-old economic resource for the people living in the mountains.