Europe Turns to Goats as Natural Firebreaks to Prevent Wildfires

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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 graze in the natural park of Collserola on May 12, 2022. | Pau Barrena/AFP via Getty Images

Yet supporters complain that Brussels has done little to actually implement the practice.

Last year, a long list of experts from the European Academies’ Science Advisory Council criticized the EU for “overwhelming focus on fire suppression and emergency response” instead of systemic solutions to remake a fire-prone landscape. The group published a set of wildfire recommendations , with livestock grazing as one of the central tools that have “proved effective in reducing wildfire size and severity.”

The EU’s farm budget supports a range of fire management approaches, said Commission spokesperson Louise Bogey, including livestock grazing among other measures like forest roads that also serve as firebreaks.

In the next iteration of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy , applicable from 2028, the Commission wants to see a “transition payment” for farmers that could be used for this purpose to support a move into shepherding, Bogey added. The EU is also working on a financial scheme with the European Investment Bank for investments in the livestock sector

Gonna need a lot of goats

In Madrid, one of the regions hardest hit by the fires, the local government is also looking to livestock grazing as fire prevention. Local farms would deploy animals to a forested area of 3,700 hectares, they announced earlier this year, costing the government €800,000. But the current fires have ravaged 27,000 hectares in the region alone.

Joe McNorton, who studies wildfires in real time at Copernicus, backs the grazing initiatives. Yet they still might not be enough in extreme situations.

“Under severe conditions, factors such as strong winds can transport burning embers ahead of the main fire front,” he said, “allowing fires to cross gaps.”

The shepherding method shouldn’t be the only solution, said Urbano Fra Paleo of Extremadura University, but there’s also no way around it. Without the grazers, the low vegetation will just keep coming back, he said.

“The decision makers do not understand this,” said Fra. They just think in terms of managing the fire when this happens, but do not think in terms of managing the landscape.”

Aitor Hernández-Morales contributed to this article.