In the last decades, livestock breeding has been transformed by processes of modernisation and intensive production. This implies a change of practices, a shift in knowledge transmission, a huge socio-economic transformation. Nonetheless in many European countries transhumance still resists as an efficient form of farming deeply influencing landscape, though increasingly transformed in a tourist attraction instead to be valorised as a real agro-pastoral system and as drive for taking care of the environment and the landscape. According to this 'heritage-turn', we are assisting to the growth of 'slow-move' tourism in grazing communities as well as to a commodification of transhumant landscapes. Nonetheless, traditional pastoralism is more recently reconsidered in terms of sustainability, human health/animal welfare and environmental impact. Researchers are also documenting the ‘return’ of new shepherds and herders in different European regions, the revitalization of some transhumant and extensive breeding practices as a potential resource for depopulated inner and rural areas of Europe and as a tool of community resilience against abandon. In Europe this is especially manifested through the preparation and development of several schools of pastoralism. The contribution will offer examples and case-studies from Italian pastoral areas with particular reference to the Apennines area and the processes of local regeneration connected to these processes.
