MOITA DA GUERRA: Unaware that time is short, more than 200 brown-and-white goats slowly munch their way through the thick undergrowth that covers the hills of southern Portugal.
Squinting against the sun’s glare, Daniel Fernandes, a 61-year-old goatherd, directs his animals across the ridges where they can feed on the dense vegetation. Yet this is not just a pretty pastoral scene. These hungry goats are on the front line of Portugal’s fight against deadly summer wildfires.
The government is hiring this herd, and dozens of others nationwide, as part of its race against the clock to guard rugged parts of the Iberian nation against a repeat of last year’s catastrophic wildfires. That includes trying to clean up as much woodland as possible before temperatures rise and the land becomes a tinderbox.
Blazes routinely blacken large areas of forest every year in Portugal. But last year they killed 106 people in what was by far the deadliest summer fire season on record. It was also a wake-up call for authorities.
“Last year was when it became clear to us that something different had to be done,” says Miguel Joao de Freitas, the government’s junior minister for forests and rural development. “Prevention is the most urgent requirement, and it has to be done as soon as possible.”
It’s a
mammoth task, and one that has at times been slowed by red tape. But one of the tactics being adopted is a proven winner: Deploying goats as an environmentally-friendly way to prevent wildfires has been done for decades in the US, especially California and the
Pacific Northwest.
