Firefighter Donkeys Helping Save Doñana National Park

Over the years, Doñana, the most important wetland area of southern Europe, has been drying up. The climate has changed, but the main reason has been 11,000 hectares of irrigation agriculture sucking up water from Doñana’s aquifer. Berries are the main crop, chosen by producers due to the right balance of salinity the aquifer provides. This has set the marshes, and with it, the integrity of this ecosystem, on a death path. In the summer of my visit, the last lake in the park completely dried. This makes life for wildlife even harder and increases bushfire risk.

“If you fight for something, you have to love it first. If you don’t love nature, if you don’t love life, you can’t fight for it.”

Luis knows the challenges Doñana National Park in southern Spain faces very well. He’s been trying to increase awareness for more than twenty years. After travelling to places like the Amazon and the Andes in South America, Luis returned to his native Andalucía, in southern Spain. He realised that a marvel of nature was declining right at his doorstep, and decided to act.

This is how “El Burrito Feliz” (The Happy Donkey) was born. It is the “story of a dream born from the love of an animal, the donkey, to fight for the environment in different aspects”, says Luis.

It’s a mild and beautiful morning near Hinojos, a small farming town in Huelva. This property contains olive trees and 3 hectares of native forests. It is essentially a buffer area of the Doñana National Park.

Luis and the other volunteers have been taking the donkeys' love to the forest to clean up the dry understory. So far they have managed to protect this patch from wildfires, and hope others would take on their model.

In this area, jobs have been the main defence of irrigation agriculture. This is one of Spain’s poorer regions and every job counts. While the harvesting season employs about 90,000 workers, about 40,000 of those are migrant workers - 14,000 of those from neighbouring Morocco. This temporary influx of workers, mostly migrant women, has been linked to abusive employment practices, sexual abuse, and poor housing conditions.

Doñana is a symbol in Spain as one of the last remaining habitats for the Iberian Lynx and one of the last stretches of undeveloped and untouched coastlines.

Recently, the Spanish Government has announced yet another plan to save Doñana. Will more millions help turn this declining ecosystem around? Or will money, as Luis says, bring about more incapable managers that add more fuel to the already smouldering forests?

Support "Firefighter Donkeys" conservation efforts - https://asociacionelburritofeliz.com/apadrina-a-tu-burrito/

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