In the mountain and foothill areas of Corsica, livestock farming is still based on the use of pastureland, which gives the animals access to spontaneous resources. Faced with the multiplication of emerging diseases, public policy standards on animal health consider that the maintenance of free-range areas presents a risk of emergence because they allow interactions between wild and domestic animals. Focusing on pig farming, this article examines the contradictions between these standards and the issues specific to Corsican pastoral farming and looks at the development of local public policy in response to these contradictions. After recalling the close link between the socio-economic transformations that took place inthe Corsican mountains after the Second World War and current pastoral livestock farming practices, it shows that the failure of two public health management policies is linked to the disconnect between the issues at stake in public policy on the one hand and in pastoral livestock farming on the other. Local actors involved in health management are mobilising and developing intermediary consultation and coordination mechanisms to respond to situations of deadlock, by embedding national management and surveillance challenges in territorial dynamics. The article proposes the notion of health territory to describe the emergence of transversal collective action that draws on the knowledge of local actors to produce public policy that is adapted to the challenges of Corsican pastoral livestock farming.