Trekking trail in northwest Portugal dedicated to the Iberian wolf and the LIFE WILD WOLF vision

We invite you to walk and explore the “Eco-Wolf Trail”, recently implemented in the highlands of the municipality of Vila Verde, located between two small mountain villages - Gondomar and Bezeguimbra - in northwest Portugal.

This circular trail has 16 interpretative stations, grouped into 3 main themes: “Villages and landscape”, “Agropastoral heritage” and “Forests and scrublands”, designed to interpret the various aspects of the natural landscape, rural heritage, and the human-wolf relationship. The trail develops along paths that for centuries are crossed by local people and wolves, within the territory of one of the packs existing in the highly human-dominated landscape of Minho region, named the Vila Verde pack.

This trail explores the objectives and vision of LIFE WILD WOLF project, focusing on the persistence of the wolf in humanized environments, the longstanding human-wolf interactions, the best procedures used when encountering wolves at close range, the adequate traditional practices to prevent attacks on livestock and the importance of native forests for wild ungulates, which are the natural prey of the wolves.

The possibility to experience fleeting sightings of wolves or their natural prey species, wolf scats detected at the intersections of paths for territorial marking of pack members, and one of the most monumental wolf traps of the Iberian Peninsula, consisting of a double pit and a stone wall with a length of around 2 km, that was traditionally used to capture wolves and locally called “Fojo do Lobo”, render the “Eco-Wolf Trail” even more special.

Resulting of an initiative from the Basic School of Vila Verde, the “Eco-Wolf Trail” was developed during the 2023/24 school year and inaugurated in May 2024, with the partnership of the Municipality of Vila Verde, and project LIFE WILD WOLF (LWW).

In this context, the LWW Portuguese team from BIOPOLIS-CIBIO provided the necessary scientific support, through lectures at school about the Iberian wolf as well as technical support for the trail route suggested by the students and the description of each trail station.

Besides, the LWW team will provide assistance in future interpretative visits with all school children from Vila Verde municipality. It also planned the implementation of similar trekking trails in other regions, as an important tool for stakeholder involvement and to create awareness on the challenges and opportunities of coexisting with wolves in human-dominated landscapes.