How wild horses are preventing wildfires in Spain

Wild horses have become a new and unlikely defence against bush fires in the Iberian Highlands.

Recent summers have brought a rampage of wildfires to Europe but with the hottest months approaching again, ecologists hope that horses could play a significant role in reducing the risk.

Horses for gorse 

In 2023, the conservation group Rewilding Spain introduced a herd of 10 horses to the Iberian Highlands. The rare horses, known as Przewalski’s, went extinct in the wild but were successfully reintroduced from European zoos.

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The horses now roam around more than 5,700 hectares of public forest, reducing the volume of combustible vegetation in the landscape.

They feed on the yellow flowers of gorse – a highly combustible plant. By "selectively clearing" it, the horses "help prevent wildfires", said Laura Lagos, a researcher at the University of A Coruna, whose 2021 study found that wild horse grazing was the most effective method for preventing wildfires.

Other animals, including sheep and bison, can also help reduce wildfire risks through grazing, but wild horses are uniquely adapted to Galicia's rugged terrain and they have "moustaches that appear designed to protect their lips from the prickly gorse", Lagos told Al Jazeera.

Although the equine dectet won't change everything on their own, the Rewilding Spain team leader Pablo Schapira told Positive News that 10 is "a good number to start a new population" and he's "looking forward to seeing how the animals interact with the larger landscape".

Roaming history

For centuries, the Serrano horse was used for "threshing and other agricultural jobs", but "allowed to roam freely when not working", says Positive News.

But the history of wild horses in Galicia "dates back thousands of years" and rock carvings of horses being hunted by humans "suggest their presence in the region during the Neolithic period", said Al Jazeera.

In the 1970s, about 22,000 wild horses "roamed the region’s mountains, forests and heathlands", and the "growing risks" of climate change, habitat loss and "declining herd numbers" show the "urgent need" to protect both the horses and the ecosystems they sustain.

Meanwhile, bison, which have "indiscriminate eating habits", consume over 130 different plant species, "effectively clearing and rejuvenating the landscape" and helping to "prevent the undergrowth from becoming a potential fire hazard", said Euronews.