{"id":346048,"date":"2026-03-14T14:42:20","date_gmt":"2026-03-14T14:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/346048\/"},"modified":"2026-03-14T14:42:20","modified_gmt":"2026-03-14T14:42:20","slug":"meet-the-firefighting-donkeys-of-spain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/346048\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the \u2018firefighting\u2019 donkeys of Spain"},"content":{"rendered":"

For millennia, the donkey was seen as the symbol of stubbornness. \u201cHorses do things out of obligation. Donkeys do them out of conviction,\u201d says Joan Ced\u00f3, who launched the Tivissa Donkeys Firefighters<\/a> in 2020. What started as a pilot with three donkeys over five acres has grown into the daily work of about 40 animals\u2014all rescued from neglect or abuse\u2014dedicated to clearing over 980 acres of public and private land in the mountainous region of Tarragona, Catalonia.<\/p>\n

\u201cA donkey weighs three times as much as a goat, so when it moves, it breaks up vegetation more effectively,” says Ced\u00f3. “A donkey also eats roughly ten times more than a goat. That means its daily impact is much greater.\u201d<\/p>\n

Have they been as effective as their Do\u00f1ana counterparts? \u201cSince we introduced donkeys in our municipality, there have been no wildfires,\u201d says Ced\u00f3. He believes that with more government support, the herd could grow to 300 animals and protect a much wider area.<\/p>\n

In Allariz, a town in the Ourense province of northwestern Spain, the donkeys of Asociaci\u00f3n Andrea<\/a> work similarly, maintaining about 2,470 acres of forest within a UNESCO biosphere reserve<\/a>. The project began in an abandoned village, where the group, in collaboration with the local council, tested a land restoration model: first with manual clearing, then with the help of donkeys that kept the terrain weed-free.<\/p>\n

Over time, the effort expanded to the core zone of the reserve. The donkeys roam freely and are tracked by GPS, which alerts caretakers if they stray beyond safe limits. They walk up to 12 miles a day, feeding mainly on low shrubs\u2014the same type of vegetation that causes wildfires.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For millennia, the donkey was seen as the symbol of stubbornness. \u201cHorses do things out of obligation. Donkeys…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[157906,157905,157907,157904,61,60,82,157902,157903,8769,263],"class_list":["post-346048","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-donkey-firefighters","tag-donkey-grazing","tag-donkey-wildfires","tag-how-to-stop-wildfires","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-science","tag-spain-wildfires","tag-what-causes-wildfires","tag-wildfires","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}