Since 2014, rescued donkeys in southern Spain have grazed firebreaks near Doñana; today, 18 help strip away wildfire fuel

Wildfires need fuel, and in much of Spain that fuel is dry brush. In a 2018 study in the journal Forests, Elsa Varela and colleagues describe how many wildfire prevention initiatives in southern Europe now depend on grazing animals to trim back plant growth, partly because mechanical clearing of it is prohibitively expensive. Near Doñana National Park in Andalusia, a similar job is performed by a small group of rescued donkeys. 18 donkeys have been an unusual crew in fighting wildfires there since 2014, and their main weapon is their appetite.

Since 2014, 18 rescued donkeys have worked as a wildfire-prevention team near Doñana National Park, grazing up to seven hours a day. (Representational/Unsplash)Meet Spain's donkey firefightersThe donkeys belong to an association called El Burrito Feliz, or The Happy Little Donkey. The group rescues abandoned donkeys and gives them a job in the outskirts of the park. The park is home to the endangered Iberian lynx and many migratory birds. The animals "are herbivorous firefighters," says Luis Manuel Bejarano, president of the association. Some of them are called Mortadelo, Magallanes, Leonor and Ainoa.

The donkeys graze for up to seven hours a day from March to November. They work in strips of land marked out by fences about 130 by 50 feet, and the fences can be moved along the edge of the park. Rather than trying to clear the whole reserve, the strips are worked in sequence across the full eight-month grazing season, building up a network of cleared ground at strategic points along the park's perimeter. Donkeys, as they graze, eat away at the dry grass, scrub and other plants that could fuel a fire. These cleared strips act as firebreaks, leaving little fuel to burn, not by eliminating brush everywhere but by interrupting the path a fire would otherwise take. Previous reports said Doñana had gone about nine years without a recorded wildfire, although many factors influence fire risk.

The study doesn’t look at donkeys. It looks at livestock grazing in general. The 2018 paper, "Payment for Targeted Grazing: Integrating Local Shepherds into Wildfire Prevention," studies a large program in Andalusia, where about 220 local shepherds and their flocks keep plant growth low on nearly 6,000 hectares of fuel breaks in public forests. The authors say that properly managed targeted grazing can be effective. They also quoted an estimate that the program saves up to 75 percent of the cost of clearing fuel breaks with hand-held brush cutters.

A similar view was reached by a 2026 review in the journal Sustainability by Shiying Xu and colleagues. The review says that appropriate grazing can reduce flammable material on the ground. It adds that grazing is most directly applicable where the primary fire threat comes from grasses or fine woody plants that animals can eat easily.

However, there are certain limits to grazing. The 2018 study says targeted grazing doesn’t fully replace mechanical clearing, but it can reduce the need for machines. The 2026 review also warns that overgrazing can increase fire risk by damaging soil and allowing flammable weeds to spread. It describes the link between grazing and fire risk as complex and dependent on the setting, so the same plan can give different results in different places.

But the concept is gaining traction. The reports say that similar groups of donkeys have been seen in Catalonia, the Basque Country and Galicia too. The rescued animals get a purpose, and the land becomes a little safer. As the 2018 study notes, early reduction of fuel can make wildfires easier to contain and less severe, so prevention is important. That makes the quiet work of these donkeys worth noticing. Donkeys won't prevent every fire, but they show how an old, simple idea can still have its uses.

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