18 donkeys have been an unusual crew in fighting wildfires there since 2014, and their main weapon is their appetite. Wildfires need fuel, and in much of Spain that fuel is dry brush. Near Doñana National Park in Andalusia, a similar job is performed by a small group of rescued donkeys.
Because mechanical clearing of it is prohibitively expensive, 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.
Donkeys won’t prevent every fire, but they show how an old, simple idea can still have its uses. The donkeys graze for up to seven hours a day from March to November. 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. 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. 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. That makes the quiet work of these donkeys worth noticing.
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. A similar view was reached by a 2026 review in the journal Sustainability by Shiying Xu and colleagues. 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. As the 2018 study notes, early reduction of fuel can make wildfires easier to contain and less severe, so prevention is important.
Previous reports said Doñana had gone about nine years without a recorded wildfire , although many factors influence fire risk. The review says that appropriate grazing can reduce flammable material on the ground.
