Several projects in Doñana, Galicia and Catalonia recover donkeys to clear forests and reduce plant fuel. Their constant grazing creates natural firebreaks and already protects thousands of hectares in a context of increasingly intense fires.
Every summer, wildfires lay waste to thousands of hectares in Spain. Rising temperatures, drought and the abandonment of rural areas, with fewer people and livestock, have encouraged the build-up of dry vegetation, turning vast areas into fuel ready to burn.
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Faced with this situation, some regions have turned to a solution as old as it is innovative: bringing back the use of donkeys as a preventive tool against fires. These animals, which have accompanied humans for more than 7,000 years, are returning to the hills to clear the undergrowth in a constant, natural way.
The urgency is growing. By August 2025, nearly one million hectares had burned in different regions of the country, the worst toll in three decades. The scale of the crisis led to disaster zones being declared in Castilla y León, Galicia, Asturias, Extremadura, Madrid and Andalusia. In the face of that threat, the donkeys’ silent work offers a slow but effective strategy: grazing every day on the vegetation that feeds the fires.
The origins of the 'firefighting donkeys'
Since 2014, 18 donkeys from the association El Burrito Feliz have been patrolling the outskirts of the Doñana National Park. The animals, rescued from abandonment, have become, according to its president, Luis Manuel Bejarano, “herbivorous firefighters”.
Mortadelo, Magallanes, Leonor and Ainoa are part of this unusual brigade. They work for up to seven hours a day between March and November, grazing strips of around 40 metres by 15 metres. Each day they remove dry vegetation and reduce the risk of fire in the areas assigned to them.
The strategy has paid off: Doñana has not recorded a forest fire in nine years. The project has even attracted the interest of the Military Emergency Unit, whose personnel visited the park and symbolically “adopted” one of the animals.
The donkeys also have the support of volunteers from the group Mujeres por Doñana, who bring them water and supervise their work in areas that vehicles cannot reach.
Experts point out that donkeys have characteristics that are particularly useful for this job. Unlike cows or sheep, they can feed on much drier, rougher vegetation, steadily eating the scrub that helps fires spread.
Rosa María Canals, professor of ecology at the Public University of Navarre, stresses that donkey grazing reduces the amount of vegetation and helps to contain fires in landscapes that are increasingly dense and dry.
For decades, the mechanisation of agriculture led to the gradual disappearance of these animals. Their absence, together with rural depopulation and the abandonment of traditional grazing, has contributed to the build-up of natural fuel in the hills.
From Doñana to Catalonia and Galicia
The model has spread to other regions. In Tivissa (Tarragona), the “Burros Bomberos” project, launched in 2020 with three animals, now has around 40, which clear close to 400 hectares. Since they were introduced, its promoters say, there have been no fires in the area.
In Allariz (Orense), the Andrea Association uses donkeys to maintain nearly 1,000 hectares within a biosphere reserve. Equipped with GPS, the animals cover up to 19 kilometres a day as they feed on scrub. Similar initiatives have also appeared in Catalonia, Galicia and the Basque Country, combining environmental conservation, rural regeneration and fire prevention.
The people driving these projects stress, however, that donkeys are not a silver bullet. Forest planning, land management and reducing highly flammable species such as pine or eucalyptus trees remain crucial.
Even so, the return of these animals is proving an effective, sustainable tool. In a context of increasingly intense fires, the answer may, paradoxically, lie in reviving age-old practices to protect the landscapes of the future.
