2026-08-17 - As Dalmatia struggles with another series of destructive wildfires, the debate in Croatia is increasingly shifting from how to extinguish fires to how to prevent them from spreading so rapidly in the first place.

One surprisingly traditional solution is now attracting renewed attention: bringing goats back to the Dalmatian karst and using controlled grazing to reduce the amount of combustible vegetation.
Goats feed on grass, weeds, shrubs and young shoots, including vegetation growing on steep, rocky terrain that is difficult or impossible to clear with machinery. During prolonged droughts and extreme summer heat, this vegetation dries out and becomes highly flammable fuel, allowing wildfires to spread rapidly, particularly when driven by strong coastal winds. Controlled grazing could therefore help create landscapes where fires have less material to burn.
The idea also has an intriguing historical dimension. In 1954, the Yugoslav authorities introduced regulations that effectively suppressed goat farming and grazing in many areas. At the time, goats were considered harmful to forests because intensive browsing damaged young vegetation and was believed to prevent natural forest regeneration. As a result, goat populations largely disappeared from the Dalmatian karst and never returned to their former numbers.
Their disappearance, however, also meant the gradual loss of a traditional form of landscape management. For generations, livestock had kept grass, shrubs and other vegetation under control. It would be misleading to blame today’s dense Mediterranean scrub solely on the Yugoslav ban: rural depopulation, the abandonment of agriculture, changing land use and climate change have all fundamentally transformed the landscape. Nevertheless, the decline of grazing has contributed to the accumulation of vegetation that can become dangerous fuel during increasingly hot and dry summers.
Controlled grazing would not replace firefighters, Canadair aircraft, Air Tractors, firebreaks or mechanical vegetation removal. Its role would be preventive. Goats could be introduced into carefully selected high-risk areas before the fire season, reducing vegetation and potentially slowing the spread and intensity of future wildfires.
Such a system would have to be professionally managed. Authorities would need to determine where grazing is appropriate, how many animals should be used, how long they should remain in a particular area and how forests, soil and biodiversity can be protected from overgrazing.
Croatian legislation already provides a framework for such an approach. Changes to the Forest Act adopted in 2024 allow certain state-owned forest lands to be leased for grazing, while new regulations introduced in March 2026 define the conditions under which this can take place. This raises the possibility that Hrvatske šume, Croatia’s state forestry company, could identify areas with particularly high wildfire risk and establish pilot projects using controlled grazing as part of the country’s fire-prevention strategy.
The results could then be measured: researchers could determine how much combustible biomass goats remove, compare the costs with mechanical clearing, assess the environmental impact and establish whether grazed areas actually slow the progress of wildfires.
There is considerable historical irony in the proposal. Seventy years ago, goats were driven from much of the Dalmatian karst because they were considered too effective at eating vegetation. Today, as abandoned land becomes increasingly overgrown and climate change makes Mediterranean summers hotter and drier, that same appetite could turn them into valuable allies.
Goats will never replace Croatia’s sophisticated firefighting system, and they certainly cannot stop a major wildfire once it is driven by drought and powerful winds. But alongside aircraft, firefighters, surveillance systems and modern technology, an animal that has lived on the rocky Adriatic landscape for centuries could once again have a practical role. Sometimes an old-fashioned solution may prove surprisingly useful against a very modern problem.