Goats herded to feed on dense vegetation to prevent wildfires in Portugal
Like 1 Dislike 0 Published on 18 Jun 2018
(13 Jun 2018) More than 200 brown-and-white goats slowly munch their way through the thick undergrowth that covers the hills of southern Portugal, oblivious to any time constraints.
Squinting against the sun's glare, Daniel Fernandes, a 61-year-old goatherd, whistles and makes clicking noises to direct his animals across the ridges where they can fill their bellies on the dense vegetation.
Yet this is not just a pretty pastoral scene. These hungry goats are on the front lines 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, who were slow to react to social trends and a changing climate.
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 United States, especially California and the Pacific Northwest.
"The firefighting goats is an idea we want to develop in order to have herds to achieve what we determine as the strips, the big highways of prevention against wildfires in the context of a programme that can give predictability to the herders," says Miguel Freitas, the government's junior minister for forests and rural development.
With Portugal's peak July 1-Sept. 30 wildfire period just around the corner, the government is enacting a raft of preventive measures.
They include using goats and bulldozers to clear woodland 10 metres (33 feet) either side of country roads.
Property owners must clear a 50-metre (164-foot) radius around an isolated house, and 100-metre (328 feet) around a hamlet.
Emergency shelters and evacuation routes are being established in villages, and their church bells will now toll when a wildfire approaches.
The government is also upgrading firefighters' response capabilities, hiring 12 water-dumping planes and 41 helicopters. In the peak wildfire period, it promises that more than 10,700 firefighters will be on standby - 1,000 more than last year.
But even as Portugal rushes to get ready, experts warn it will likely take years to correct the trends that make the country especially vulnerable.
In recent decades, people have deserted the countryside in droves to pursue a better life in bigger towns and cities.
That has left care of the forests in the hands of mostly elderly people who often lack financial resources.
Portuguese farmers often plant long, unbroken stretches of eucalyptus, a fast-growing tree that offers a quick financial return from the country's important paper pulp industry.
But eucalyptus also burns like a fire torch.
The government is introducing legislation to encourage the planting of more slow-growing native species, such as cork trees, holm oaks or chestnut trees, which are more resilient to flames and can slow the advance of wildfires.
Climate change isn't helping. In the 1980s, Portugal saw its annual average of charred forest come in at less than 75,000 hectares (185,325 acres).
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