Goats help beat wildfires:

Discovery

Freitas

Darnielen

Unaware that time is short, more than 200 brownand-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, 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.

“Last year was when it became patently 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 United States, especially California and the Pacific Northwest.

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 meters (33 feet) either side of country roads. Property owners must clear a 50-meter (164-foot) radius around an isolated house, and 100 meters (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. (AP)