Europe turns to goats to prevent wildfires

Europe turns to goats to prevent wildfires As abandoned farmland ignites around Europe, livestock and their appetites could be key to preventing wildfires. By AGNES RØNBERG Spanish shepherd Daniel Sanchez herds his flock of goats and sheep at the natural park of Collserola, near Barcelona on May 12, 2022. | Pau Barrena/ AFP via Getty Images Firefighters in France and Spain are struggling to find enough airplanes to pour water on devastating wildfires. Preventing future blazes might depend on finding enough goats. The idea of using grazing animals to create firebreaks in the landscape is gaining traction as a serious solution, officially endorsed this year by the European Commission and the top farmers’ lobby. Researchers have credited livestock eating brush with restraining the spread of fires in the Extremadura, Andalusia and Valencia regions of Spain. Yet while the solution is low-tech, it’s not cheap, with shepherds often dependent on government subsidies to make a living. And the even bigger hurdle, fire control experts say, is politicians’ emphasis on fighting fires once they’re already lit, rather than investing in prevention. “In the same way that we understand the need to finance firefighters, we also need to recognize the work done by shepherds,” said Jordi Vendrell, who leads the Pau Costa Foundation, a nonprofit in Spain that studies wildfire management. As blazes threaten Bordeaux, French farmers have been helping alongside the firefighters, filling their slurry tanks with water to help where they can. Yet a lack of farmers is part of the problem. Abandoned farmland grows over with shrubs that dry out or get replaced by vulnerable, homogenous forests that burn easily. The European space program’s satellite observatory, Copernicus, confirmed that the largest fires currently ravaging Europe are indeed happening in areas where forests and shrubland form large, connected landscapes. A wildfire burns in Colinas del Campo, Spain on Aug. 21, 2025. | Cesar Manso/AFP via Getty Images Yet while there’s plenty of natural fodder for goats, the market doesn’t offer much incentive for shepherds. José María Castilla of the Spanish farm lobby ASAJA said getting young people into goat herding is “impossible” without making it profitable. The solution, he argued, is creating a dedicated fund, following the same logic as the EU’s coronavirus response in 2020. “Some people are saying that the farmers that are living next to the borders of Russia need to receive more money, since they are the first line of defense,” he said. The first line of defense offered by shepherds tending to tinderbox land plots, he argued, “is exactly the same thing.” Grazing for a good cause Funders are embracing Catalonia’s Fire Flocks project as a potential success story, mixing fire prevention with commercial farming. Also bankrolled by the local government using EU farm funds, goat and sheep herders deploy their animals to graze in specific, high-risk woodlands defined by the regional firefighting organization. And in local shops, the farmers sell their cheese and yogurts with a special label to tell buyers of their noble cause. Different regions in Spain use goats, sheep, cows or even horses to do the job; in Couso, there’s a two-month waiting list to buy meat from cows used for a similar purpose priced at €10 a kilo. The subsidies aren’t needed to support an untested idea, but rather to restore a bygone way of life. “Forests and other rural areas used to be managed as part of economic activities that, today, just aren’t profitable,” said Vendrell of the Pau Costa Foundation. “So there are no real incentives to tend to them.” The Commission has singled out grazing as a way farm animals can help societies adapt to climate change, instead of simply being a source of pollution. In a March communication on preventing wildfires, it pointed to grazing as part of the solution, and repeated the endorsement in a new strategy for Europe’s livestock. Sheep and goats