Spain farmers revive native grazers to fight wildfires

Goats, sheep and native cattle are returning to the hills of Spain's Galicia region as local communities turn to grazing animals to clear undergrowth and reduce the risk of wildfires.

The initiative has gained momentum in an area hit hard by Spain's worst wildfire year in 2025, where decades of pine and eucalyptus plantations and rural depopulation left forests increasingly overgrown and fire-prone.

The animals include the cachena, a hardy native breed known as a "goat-cow" because of its ability to forage widely and traverse rugged terrain inaccessible to larger cattle.

A fire in 2017 that tore through the parish of Vincios prompted community associations who collectively manage the land to opt for a centuries-old wildfire prevention technique — breeding native livestock including goats, sheep, and the nimble long-horned cachena cows, which help clear flammable undergrowth by grazing on the land.

Their efforts, together with those of other associations across Galicia, have boosted the population of native livestock from just over 1,800 in the late 1990s to more than 30,000 by early 2026, according to regional association BOAGA — including roughly 8,000 Cachena cows, up from 400.

The growth was achieved purely through encouraging reproduction of surviving breeds, with the regional government granting farmers incentives to keep heifers rather than sell them and a local zoological centre providing breeding males to farmers at low cost to facilitate mating.

"The native livestock keeps scrubland at an appropriate height so it does not become dangerous," said Jose Taboada, coordinator of the Vincios land collective.

He gestured towards a portion of land scrubbed clean of flammable shrubs like brambles, gorse and broom, which contain oils that burn intensely and can carry fires from the ground into the tree canopy.

The cows keep the vegetation under control without eradicating it altogether, Taboada explained, adding that the animals wore GPS collars, eliminating the need for fences and allowing them to roam freely.

"They are perfectly adapted to terrain like ours," Taboada said.

Vincios is one of roughly 3,000 communities in Galicia that, as collectives, manage around 700,000 hectares, a quarter of the region's land, in a practice dating back to medieval times and formally legalised in 1989.

The region is one of the most affected in Spain by wildfires, with nearly 119,000 hectares of land burned last year, an area roughly double the size of Madrid.

Scientists link increasingly severe wildfire seasons across southern Europe to climate change.

Spain, the third-most forested country in Europe, has registered average temperatures 5.6 degrees Celsius above 1961-1990 levels in July so far, according to the Reuters Climate Monitor.