Nature conservation and pastoralism in Wallonia
Presently, extensive farming is very marginal and only present in particular economic and ecological situations, but in the past pastoralism was common in Wallonia, especially on poor, dry, wet or peaty soils, which developed on calcareous or acidic rocks
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Abstract Presently, extensive fanning is very marginal and only present in particular economic and ecological situations, but in the past pastoralism was common in Wallonia, especially on poor, dry, wet or peaty soils, which developed on calcareous or acidic rocks of the Calestienne and Ardennes regions. Sandy soils were also present in the north, but to a lesser extent. Sheep used to graze common lands, heaths and moors on acidic soils, and calcareous grasslands on limestone or chalk. Cattle and horses used to graze in coppiced woodlands or forests. Wet meadows along streams and rivers, and mires were mown for winter fodder or livestock bedding. Nowadays, last remnants of old pastoral landscapes are to be found on the poorest soils of the uplands or on steep slopes of rocky hills not (yet) reafforested. For many reasons, extensive grazing has rarely been used as a management tool for biodiversity conservation or restoration until recently, even in old pastoral landscapes. Restoration or management operations have frequently been carried out through mechanical management, and the use of large grazers for restoration or maintenance is quite recent. Where they are used, these are hardy breeds of cattle or ponies in wet pastures and abandoned meadows, sheep in heathlands and moors and sheep in association with goats in dry grasslands. Animals belong to NGOs, to amateur stockbreeders or to the Nature and Forests Administration. Sites under management agreements with fanners are generally grazed by productive breeds (non-lactating cows, young bulls or calves) but some use hardy breeds. This paper presents briefly three cases - the restoration of moors and bogs on the Hautes-Fagnes plateau, fallow wet meadows and pastures in the Ardenne valleys and calcareous grasslands in the Fagne-Famenne region - and notes the problems encountered in grazing management.
1 Introduction Wallonia is a small area of 16 936 km2, situated in the south of Belgium, close to France, the Grand-Duchy of Luxembourg, Germany and The Netherlands. It is a densely populated area with 198 inhabitants per km\ although not as dense as Belgium (335 inh. / km\ Urban and industrial areas cover 23% of the region's territory, forests 32% and agriculture 45%. Deep, fertile, silty soils are mainly situated in the north and are devoted to cereals (wheat, barley) and industrial crops (sugar beet, flax, oil-seed rape) whereas more humid or thinner and stony soils are devoted to grasslands and forests, essentially in the south.
B. Redecker et al. (eds.), Pasture Landscapes and Nature Conservation © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2002
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Louis-Marie Delescaille
The average agricultural area per holding is 35ha but situations differ between the north and the south. One of the characteristics of Walloon agriculture is that there are many family farms engaged in mixed farming (animal husbandry and crop production), by-products of crop cultivation being used for animal feeding and manure produced by animals being used on arable fields or grasslands. More than
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