Cabras e incendios forestales en Serra de Tramuntana (Islas Baleares) y el Montnegre (Cataluña)

Goats are part of many territories with a Mediterranean climate and vegetation, coexisting with other herbivorous, carnivorous and omnivorous animals, plants, shrubs and trees, humans and other species. This is the case of the Serra de Tramuntana (Balearic Islands) and the Montnegre Park (Catalonia), where, in addition, a diversity of historical changes – such as the process of deagrarisation since the middle of the last century or the current prevalence of productivist livestock systems – have led to important socio-environmental and landscape transformations and in the relationships between the diversity of species that make up these environments. In this chapter, we intend to study the role played by feral goats and goats in the environmental management of the two study contexts, especially concerning the problem of wildfires. To this end, the text is framed within the theoretical and methodological proposal of multispecies ethnography. The results suggest that goats have a changing role in wildfire prevention related to the social and political dimensions surrounding them. The study of the interactions of goats with other actors in the co-produced multispecies spaces can contribute to creating interspecies collaborative dynamics with the potential to influence environmental management to prevent wildfires.

Cifre-Sabater, M. & Escribano, P. (2024). Cabras e incendios forestales en Serra de Tramuntana (Islas Baleares) y el Montnegre (Cataluña). En Cruzada, S. M. & González-Abrisketa, O. (Eds.), Animales y antropología: etnografías más que humanas en España (pp. 189-208). Editorial CSIC.