The Stewardship Platform of the Biodiversity Foundation has published the Report of the 5th Inventory of Land Stewardship Initiatives in Spain.

At the Biodiversity Foundation we have been promoting land stewardship as a conservation tool for years. To this end, among other actions, we have just published the Report of the 5th Inventory of Land Stewardship Initiatives in Spain, a text that collects information on the stewardship agreements in force in 2016 and 2017. It is a census that we began to carry out in 2008 and whose objective is to reflect the status and evolution of all stewardship initiatives with a duration of two years.

The Inventory of Land Stewardship Initiatives in Spain is one of the most important products of the Land Stewardship Platform, which is coordinated by the Biodiversity Foundation. It is the only source at the state level of information referring to stewardship entities and agreements, configuring itself as a key tool for analysing the status and trend of this nature conservation tool.

Land stewardship is a set of strategies and instruments that aim to involve the owners and users of the territory in the conservation and good use of natural, cultural and landscape values and resources. To achieve this, it promotes agreements and mechanisms for continuous collaboration between owners, custodian entities and other public and private agents

The data collected in this inventory include information on the surface area, number of entities and agreements established for conservation. Thus, this inventory has included atotal land surface dedicated to land stewardship in Spain of 370,272 ha, in addition to 308,200 ha of marine stewardship and 349,846 ha of hunting stewardship that are not accounted for in previous inventories, given their particular nature. During this year, a total of 166 entities involved in almost 2,500 land stewardship agreements have been counted, which show a consolidation of these voluntary agreements. At the regional level, theautonomous communities where custody has the greatest implementation are Catalonia with 766 agreements, the Region of Murcia with 337, Castilla-La Mancha with 222 and the Valencian Community, with 215.

The 5th Inventory Report offers, for the first time, a detailed interactive map of land stewardship in Spain and reflects the participation of communal entities, incorporating a disaggregated treatment of land stewardship exercised by hunting entities. Publishing ignores old data that has not been confirmed by entities.