Animal welfare and ecosystem services in mountain areas

The ecosystem services framework describes the benefits that natural environments provide to human populations. Mountain ecosystems are extremely diverse and in fact support about one quarter of terrestrial bio- diversity. The provision of ecosystem services in mountain areas depends upon good animal welfare and vice versa . Thus, proper assessment methods are needed to measure and ensure good welfare levels in moun- tain areas. In this study, we have tested five animal-based measures collected in eight mountain dairy farms and compared them to data collected in 124 small-scale dairy farms. Despite obtaining better mean results when looking at selected animal-based indicators in comparison to reference data, great variability was observed between farms similarly to what reported in other studies. Future research should aim at creating a reference database of animal-based measure collected in mountain farms only as well as measuring dairy cow welfare on pasture conditions considering that is a common practice in mountain dairy farms and often involves an abrupt change in husbandry and management systems.