Spain Deploys Rescued Donkeys as Wildfires Force Mass Evacuations

Spain declared a national emergency as intense summer wildfires forced over 30,000 people to evacuate across southern Europe, with blazes spreading rapidly near Madrid and into southern France. While authorities deploy aircraft and emergency crews, a non-profit organization in Catalonia is deploying an unconventional defense by using rescued donkeys to combat forest fires. The initiative, named Tivissa Donkey Firefighters, uses herds of rehabilitated animals to graze dry grasslands and clear dense undergrowth, effectively creating natural firebreaks that slow down approaching flames and assist firefighter operations in remote mountainous regions.

Extreme heat and prolonged drought have destroyed more than 240,000 acres across Spain this summer, making early intervention critical. Founder Joan Cedó Sans launched the Tivissa project in 2020 after observing how donkeys naturally cleared flammable vegetation around his property following a 2013 fire. The non-profit now manages a herd of 62 rescued donkeys, including former racing animals and neglected working stock. Environmental researchers at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona confirmed that grazing animals consume fine fuel like dry grass and trample thick undergrowth, reducing fire intensity and helping ground teams extinguish blazes more easily.

Environmental experts across Europe are urging governments to combine traditional livestock grazing with advanced monitoring tools like drones and satellite artificial intelligence. Similar traditional grazing programs using horses, sheep, and goats are gaining traction across rural Spain to restore ecological balances. For India, which faces escalating seasonal forest fires across the Himalayan belt in states like Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh, Spain's community-driven bio-grazing model provides an affordable ecological alternative to expensive chemical clearing and modern firefighting hardware.