ABOUT US
Our organisation and history

The Organisation

JESÚS
GARZÓN

Founder of Trashumancia y Naturaleza.

Defender of nature and sustainable rural development.

Pablo Manzano

President

Pablo Manzano is a research scientist in sustainability of pastoral systems. In the course of his doctoral thesis he conducted studies on seed dispersal by transhumant sheep with the support of Jesús Garzón, who was his mentor in understanding the historical, economic and anthropological dimensions of transhumance. He gained experience with mobile pastoralists from different continents while working in different international organizations.

Jorge Escudero Patiño

Vice President

Industrial Engineer. Founder of the Environmental Education Center La Dehesa He was born in Riópar in the first half of the twentieth century and enjoyed his first 10 years of what it was like to live in a town of 1000 inhabitants. At the age of 10 he went to Madrid to study and because of his love for nature, he met Jose Antonio Valverde, Felix Rodriguez de la Fuente, Javier Castroviejo, Fernando Palacios and Jesus Garzon, with whom he shared many field days. He has developed an important work for the dissemination and conservation of the natural environment and extensive livestock in the environment of the Sierras de Segura and Cazorla.

Manuel Bahíllo Martín

General Secretary

Manuel Bahíllo Martín. Founder together with Jesús Garzón of this Foundation. Participant and organizer of many activities and actions of the conservation movement mainly in Cantabria, but also in the rest of Spain. As Manager of the Fundación Camino Lebaniego he has presented and directed life, interreg and erasmus projects.

Francesca Pasetti

Honorary Member

Francesca Pasetti is a Biologist, with a PhD in Applied Ecology, fluent in 5 languages, and has been dedicated for more than 20 years to Extensive Livestock Farming and especially to Transhumance.

She is currently the Focal Point for Spain, for the declaration of Transhumance as Intangible Cultural Heritage of UNESCO, and co-chair of the European Working Group for the International Year of Pastures and Shepherds declared by the United Nations for 2026.

In his more than 40 years of work experience, he has been working for the UN, the EC, GTZ, KFZ and private companies in Africa, Latin America, Asia, Spain and several other countries in Europe and the Middle East. She is currently responsible for the international projects of the Fundación Trashumancia y Naturaleza.

Secretary of the UNESCO Club; Transhumance and Transition and coordinator of the Erasmus Plus Eco-TransH project on transhumance.

Ignacio Doadrio

Honorary Member

PhD in Biology from the Complutense University of Madrid. Research Professor at CSIC. Head of the Biodiversity and Evolutionary Biology Group of CSIC. Vice-director of collections and documentation of the National Museum of Natural Sciences. More than 300 scientific publications. Member of the scientific committee for the Spanish Catalogue of Threatened Species (MITERD) and of the Scientific Committee of the Man and Biosphere (MaB) program of Unesco. Since 2021 he is the head of the Spanish scientific authority for the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). He is Senior Shepherd of Barrios de Luna (León).

Lawrence B. Sudlow

Environmental Consultant and Media Advisor

Currently working with several organisations as a consultant on a variety of topics within the environmental management sector, both private and public entities. Project management is the main focus of my work, but I am also collaborating with organisations on communication and grant procedures. Some contact and collaboration is with political groups but mainly as part of my work with civil society organisations.

My experience working with civil society organisations has always been focused on protecting nature and defending people’s rights. I have experience in strategic and operational planning, seeking and managing public and private grants, establishing and strengthening alliances, political and social advocacy actions, spokesperson, coordination of teams and working groups, as well as project management.

A Brief History of Us

BACKGROUND

The ‘Concejo de la Mesta’ Association is founded in 1992 with Project 2001. Its main objective is the conservation of drovers roads as ecological highways that connect, from north to south, the entirety of the Iberian Peninsula. This is done through the development of traditional activities such as transhumance and pushing alternative uses of these roads which favour the active involvement of the rural population. The huge impact of Project 2001 propelled the legal protection of the drovers roads network, accelerating the approval of the Drovers Roads Law in 1995 (‘Ley 3/1995 de Vías Pecuarias’).

‘TRASHUMANCIA Y NATURALEZA’

In 1997, the ‘Trashumancia y Naturaleza’ Association is founded to support transhumant shepherds, as well as presenting complaints against illegal occupations of drovers roads. From the very beginning our organisation has maintained close contact with the Ministry of Agriculture and the European Commission, ensuring the inclusion of transhumance in the Agri-Environmental Programme. Our objective is that transhumant pastoralism, as a form of extensive livestock farming, receives proper financial support for its contribution to the conservation of high-value ecosystems and drovers roads.

OUR ALLIES AND SPONSORS

Our collaborators include European conservation societies such as EURONATUR and the Frankfurt Zoological Society (Germany); the Unie van Provinciale Landschappen and the Stichting Trashumance & Natuur (Netherlands); as well as the AVINA and MAVA foundations, Fundación Biodiversidad (Spain), Territori i Paisatje and other public and private institutions.