Ramats de Foc (Fire Flocks) — Targeted Grazing for Wildfire Prevention

Ramats de Foc ('Fire Flocks', also called FireFlocks) is a targeted-grazing wildfire-prevention scheme run by the Pau Costa Foundation in Girona province, Catalonia, Spain, since 2016. Shepherds move sheep and goat herds through forest understory and shrubland identified by firefighting services as strategic fuel-break zones, reducing the vegetation load that lets wildfires spread and letting firefighters operate more safely.

The public administration pays participating shepherds per hectare grazed inside the scheme, valuing fuel reduction explicitly as an ecosystem service: EUR 140/ha/year in Strategic Management Areas and EUR 70/ha/year in Complementary Areas. A peer-reviewed five-year study (Land, MDPI, 2022) surveyed the programme's original cohort of farmers across three Girona pilot sites and found the payments improved the financial viability of small extensive livestock farms while keeping shepherds engaged in fuel management. A companion study mapped a 42,487 ha landscape area (64% forest, much of it within the Natura 2000 network) as the strategic scope for grazing deployment, of which the Pau Costa Foundation reports about 500 hectares are actively managed by 18 shepherds.

The project has drawn further funding, including a EUR 24,375 grant from the Diputació de Lleida (2021), a 2022 BBVA Foundation National Award, and support from the Caja de Ingenieros Foundation and the Diputació de Tarragona, and is cited in the EU LIFE 'GrazeLIFE' synthesis and Greece's 2024 Wildfire Peer Review as an evidenced model for fuel-reduction grazing.

The main limitation is scale: after nearly a decade, direct payments still cover roughly 500 hectares grazed by 18 shepherds, well short of the 42,487 ha planning area, and no independently measured wildfire-suppression outcome (e.g., fire spread rate in treated versus untreated zones) was found in the public record.

Read the full analysis: https://www.paucostafoundation.org/en/proyectos/ramats-de-foc/