In Barcelona, between April and July, 290 sheep and goats employed by the municipality had a mission: to prevent fires by eating as much vegetation as possible. The city council of the Catalan city carried out an experiment for several months, based on ecopastoralism.
This technique aims to deploy herbivores in certain risk areas. While they feed, the animals will clean the land naturally, removing dry grass, branches or bushes that could serve as fuel in the event of a fire.
A large park of 8000 hectares
“Here we are not inventing anything. We are updating a practice that existed before and that has disappeared,” he explained to the guardian Guillem Canaleta, member of the Pau Costa Foundation. The latter had already sent several animals to the province of Girona in 2016 with a similar mission.
Barcelona City Council has decided to deploy the four-legged animals in the Collserola Natural Park, which dominates the city with its 8,000 hectares of vegetation. And that it is particularly sensitive to fires. An average of 50 fires occur there each year, so the role of the goats and sheep that have worked so hard this summer is even more fundamental.
“It is not a miracle solution. But it is part of a more global plan to make the land more resistant to fires,” he explained to the guardian Julia Rouet-Leduc, researcher at the University of Leipzig, Germany.
The use of these animals can also have economic benefits for cities. In Andalusia, in the south of Spain, the technique of ecopastoralism has been used for two decades. Now, 100,000 animals are employed by the region, saving 75% of what mechanical land clearing would cost.
Proponents of this practice also argue that the animals participate in the repollination of the soil, carrying seeds with them. In the end, the Catalan goats and sheep cleared 72 hectares of the park where they were sent.
A technique being developed in France
In other parts of the world, this technique has already been adopted. In California in particular, in Portugal, but also in France, in a more modest way.
In 2020, the Ministry of Agriculture praised a Rove goat farm in Bouches-du-Rhône, which “participates in fire prevention by clearing the bushes”.
“A goat is the best ecological brushcutter. Especially the Rove goat, which is not difficult in terms of feeding. (…) Goats can eat anything that is at their height, when they stand on their two hind legs “, said Éric Prioré, breeder, at the time.
This summer, in Hyères (Var), the “Bêle colline” association offered its services to owners. Equipped with an army of goats, the association moved from property to property to clean them naturally. In France, property owners who live within 200 meters of a forest or woodland have a legal obligation to clean up their property.
Source: BFM TV
