Rewilding Portugal: the valley that waited 400 years for the cows to come home

Kickstarted by the reintroduction of an ancient breed of cattle, a rewilding project in northern Portugal’s Côa valley is enriching wildlife and community

To the outside world we must have been a very odd sight. A group of 20 people standing on the sloping granite boulder-strewn hillside of Ermo das Águias in Portugal’s Côa valley, taking photographs and whispering in awe at the sight of what appeared to be an enclosure of brown cows.

But these were no ordinary cows. These were tauros; a new, specially bred version of a long-extinct wild cattle species (called aurochs) that were last seen here 400 years ago. Their reintroduction is the latest initiative of Rewilding Portugal – a four-year-old non-profit organisation whose mission is to create a wildlife corridor along the length of the Côa River valley, joining the key habitats of the Douro River in the north with the Malcata mountains in the south.