Spain's wild horses in peril, despite key role in prevention

The wildfires that used to burn each summer in the woods above the Spanish village of Barro have diminished to almost none since Lucia Perez started grazing wild horses there.

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“There used to be fires every year but since 2019 when we started coming here we’ve had one or two small fires the first year and nothing since,” said Perez, 37, explaining how by clearing the undergrowth between the trees the horses help stop fires igniting and spreading. Fire prevention is one of several roles wild horses play in preserving the northwestern region of Galicia’s delicate ecosystems, scientists say. But Europe’s largest herd of wild horses has dwindled to less than half the 22,000 that roamed its mountains, forests and heathlands in the 190s.

On the Serra da Groba heath in NW Spain (60 miles west of Barro) a herd of wild horses feasts on the yellow flowers of gorse, “selectively clearing” a plant that is especially combustible, said Laura Lagos, a researcher at the University of A Coruña. This allows other plants such as purple flowering heather and white asphodels to thrive, she said. It also helps preserve the heather around peat bogs, abundant in sphagnum mosses, one of them most effective ecosystems for capturing carbon.

A 2021 study by the University of A Coruña, in which Lagos took part, found that grazing heathlands by wild horses was best for prevent ing wildfires while promoting plant biodiversity and capturing carbon, when compared to other potential uses of the land such as planting long-term pine forests, short-term Eucalyptus forests or grazing by domestic animals. “Studies show that areas with horses graze the heath’s biodiversity increases,” Lagos said. “They are a fundamental part of the ecosystem. They benefit both the flora and the fauna associated with these open spaces.”