Many traditional land systems in Europe, e.g. pastoral systems, have been lost over the past decades, including their values for society and (barely studied) knowledge about sustainable land management. Efforts to preserve the remaining ones as cultural heritage or nature reserves have not had a meaningful impact. Paradoxically, three of the main pressures driving the loss of traditional land systems – wilderness conservation, agro-environmental schemes and tourism – are closely linked to the dominant policy approaches that aim to deal with agricultural land abandonment in these systems. Through a case study approach in three traditional highland-lowland transhumant systems in Spain, Ireland and France and by integrating landscape ecology and social theory, this project will study perspectives on land management in policy and practice and how these have contributed to the current nature of transhumant systems. The research hypothesis – that landscape-oriented management perspectives remained dominant in traditional land management practices, whereas policies affecting traditional land systems adopted a sectoral approach to landscape management – will be tested by combining integrated landscape analyses and a grounded theory approach that is applied in both interviews with transhumant shepherds and policy analysis. Results will explain why current policies are not adapted to transhumance practices and how this could be improved in the future.