The Secretary General for Territory and Biodiversity and President of the Board of Trustees of the Biodiversity Foundation, Antonio Serrano, presented yesterday in Cáceres the project to create the Information and Documentation Center for Livestock Trails that will be located in Malpartida de Cáceres.

During the presentation ceremony, Antonio Serrano was accompanied by the director of the Biodiversity Foundation, María Artola, the Minister of Rural Development of the Junta de Extremadura, Francisco Javier López, and the mayor of Malpartida de Cáceres, Antonio Jiménez.

The Livestock Trails Information and Documentation Centre is the first to be created in our country and aims to become a national scientific and informative benchmark. The headquarters will be located in the Casa-Palacio de los Mayorazgo in Malpartida de Cáceres, Extremadura, where the rehabilitation works will begin shortly.

Through this initiative, the Biodiversity Foundation of the Ministry of the Environment, the Ministry of Rural Development of the Junta de Extremadura and the city council of Malpartida de Cáceres, promoters of this center, intend to disseminate the heritage, natural and development values of the National Network of Livestock Trails, thus allowing the extension of its uses, so beneficial to the environment.

The centre will house a documentary collection that will bring together all the historical, cartographic and bibliographic information of interest on the cattle trails, in order to facilitate their study and research. In addition, it will host educational activities, through the assembly of an interactive exhibition on cattle trails, which will have touch computer screens, maps of real ravines with associated photographs, simulations of transhumant routes, or resting places with different settings.

Likewise, the values of the cattle trails in general and especially those of the Extremadura network will be disseminated, through educational and awareness-raising activities, scientific meetings, conferences and work days. A website of the centre will also be created, in order to make available to all those interested the information contained in the documentary and bibliographic collection, as well as the reviews generated by the centre. Likewise, the page will have basic information of interest about livestock routes such as their origin, importance, routes, uses, or their potentialities.