The goat brigade that stops raging forest fires in Chile

In Santa Juana – a municipality with about 13,000 inhabitants in the central Biobío region, about 340 miles from the Chilean capital of Santiago – a herd of 250 goats is known as the “goat brigade.” Year-round, they’re deployed to prevent forest fires in several locations.

The goats’ owners – 44-year-old biologist Rocío Cruces and 47-year-old forestry engineer Víctor Faúndez, both of whom were born in the city of Curanilahue – explain that one of the goats’ many functions is to keep the land free of highly-flammable herbaceous and shrub vegetation. The animals achieve this by eating while being herded by the Buena Cabra (“Good Goat”) team. The project was initiated by Cruces, Faúndez and two conservationists back in 2016.

The project’s initial purpose was to conserve a native forest through ecotourism. Soon, however, it began working to curb fires. The initiative’s effectiveness was confirmed at noon on February 3, 2023, the summer in which Chile recorded its deadliest wildfires in a decade.

“It was a trial by fire, literally,” Cruces recalls. Along with her husband, she witnessed how the inferno stopped in front of their property: “We were shocked because, first of all, we didn’t evacuate that day. [Instead], we stayed in the park, in a safety zone we had created, with natural firebreaks thanks to strategic grazing. The surrounding community – about 30 families – also took shelter with us. We said, ‘We can’t just be a success story and hug each other while the rest of the residents – [living in] 60% of the territory of the Santa Juana commune – get burned.’”

The couple had mixed feelings, ranging from fascination with their achievement, to mourning for the six people who died in the area. “We felt a responsibility. And that’s when we started knocking on all the doors [in the region], to expand our initiative to other places. We secured funding from CORFO (the Production Development Corporation, a Chilean governmental organization) and thus managed to establish ourselves as an alternative to the traditional way of building firebreaks,” the biologist details, in an interview with EL PAÍS.

The idea of bringing in the goats to prevent these tragedies was born in the summer of 2017, when another fire left more than 20 people dead and tens of thousands of hectares of land destroyed in the Chilean regions of Ñuble, La Araucanía and Biobío. One of the affected towns was Santa Juana. “We were threatened by the fire that broke out miles away from us, but didn’t reach our property. That created uncertainty, because we saw how vulnerable we were. So, we began to research what we could do to address this risk,” Cruces explains.

What the couple found was that in countries like Spain, Portugal, Canada and the United States, there are populations that rarely suffer the ravages of forest fires. This is because they practice strategic grazing, which is based on regenerative livestock farming. However, in Chile, back in 2017, there were almost no similar projects. Or, at least, the ones that existed at that time were very incipient. Thus, convinced by foreign experience – as well as the limited literature available – they acquired their first 16 goats. They would raise them, guide them and implement a comprehensive grazing plan.

Smart Collars

Unlike other more selective herbivores, goats eat brambles, hawthorns and other highly fire-hazardous plants. Proper land management isn’t just about reducing the vegetation load in the soil without the use of herbicides, but also about applying different techniques to create a territory that can withstand a fire and produce nutritious soils.

The Buena Cabra team also made modifications to the property – named Bosques de Chacay Park – to reduce the vegetation load, so that this grazing strategy would work in South American lands. “It’s not just a matter of leaving the goats to their fate. The key is that it’s a [structured approach], where the land is divided up [to control the process]. That is, quadrants are created, where the goats enter for a set period of time, but we also implement appropriate rotations and exclusion zones, so as to protect elements like native trees.”

To do this, they use mobile fences, which are easily adjusted by people. And, currently, in collaboration with scientists from the University of Concepción and CityLab Biobío – along with support from researchers in Andorra and from the City Science and Responsive Environments research groups at the MIT Media Lab – Buena Cabra is developing a smart collar capable of tracking the goats’ movements, via the use of satellite technology.

The preliminary results of this latest innovation are expected to be presented in October at MIT’s 2025 City Science Summit – titled Cities in Transition – which will bring together some 150 researchers from around the world in Concepción. “It’s a project that can be scaled to other regions. The goats not only help clear the land, but they also recover territories [and] carry out organic regeneration, [while] fertilizing the land. The added benefit is the ability to wear GPS collars to track the areas that the goats visit during their grazing. This also helps [researchers] collect information on the goats’ behavior, including whether they’re [moving] in herds or not,” says Diego Ramírez, a telecommunications engineer and data scientist at CityLab Biobío.

The smart collars collect information through sensors. This info is then sent to data collection systems, allowing the goats’ positions to be determined with the use of GPS. In the future, the animal’s physiological parameters will be measured through sensors.

In addition to promoting this new innovation, firebreak services and regenerative livestock farming, Bosque de Chancay Park offers goat tourism. Visitors can enter on bicycles – which create water trails and, consequently, greater humidity – and interact with the animals. “They’re very intelligent and docile,” says Cruces, who holds a small goat in her arms while conducting this interview.

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