BARCELONA | Overlooking Barcelona, about 300 sheep and goats peacefully graze on grasses capable of igniting within hours as part of a pilot fire prevention plan in Spain’s second-largest city.
It is a little after 9am when the din of bells rings out. The new occupants of the district have set to work, at the foot of the Collserola natural park, the largest in the city, where residents walk their dogs or go jogging.
“Right,” “Very well my pretty!” : Daniel Sánchez, the chief shepherd, speaks to them in Catalan… before resuming a conversation on the telephone while the herd grazes the lower part of the Mediterranean vegetation of the park, which is drier every day.
His herd is the first to graze like this in decades in this city of 1.6 million people.
“This project was born out of great concern around this high fire risk area,” explains Ferran Pauné, the biologist responsible for this experiment, which was launched in April and is due to last until June.
“We are in a Mediterranean area, very populated, with many housing estates within a park” whose vegetation has a potential for “enormous combustion”, he continues, adding that it could burn “in just eight hours in extreme conditions.
Sheep and goats “are at work” to maintain this area which was first cleared by municipal services and the animals have “perfectly” adapted to this urban adventure, continues Ferran Pauné.
“It catches fire every year,” confirms Sergi Domínguez, a resident of the neighborhood, pointing to the vegetation. “The animals eat the weeds that are below, and that’s the best thing to do” to avoid too devastating fires, comments this 52-year-old maintenance worker who would like to see more sheep in the next spring.
For Daniel, the shepherd, who left his small village of Sant Llorenç Savall, 50 km inland, to settle in Barcelona for three months, “the main challenge is to get people used to the rural environment, they no longer know what it is”, he says, before confiding that the adaptation was not easy for him either.
“I’m getting tired of not seeing complete darkness but also constant noise. Sometimes I think I hear a sheep calling and in fact it’s the siren of an ambulance, “he says.
