Przewalski’s horses are roaming Spain’s Iberian Highlands again after an absence of more than 10,000 years, as a rewilding project uses the animals’ natural grazing to reshape a landscape increasingly vulnerable to wildfires. The horses were released in Villanueva de Alcorón, Guadalajara province, as part of an effort by Rewilding Spain to restore the ecological role once played by large wild herbivores. Their grazing and trampling reduce vegetation and forest biomass, while helping create a more varied landscape of woodland and open pasture. The return of the horses follows their near-extinction in the 20th century and represents a new stage in efforts to restore natural processes across the Iberian Highlands. According to Rewilding Spain, an environmental conservation initiative, the animals can help improve pasture quality and support biodiversity, while reducing the amount of combustible vegetation. The project is an opportunity for visitors to observe horses living freely in Western Europe.
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Spain’s wild horses rebuild a fire-prone landscape
The horses are not being released simply to increase the number of wild animals in the region. Their grazing is intended to replace an ecological function that was lost after extensive livestock farming, with horses and cattle disappearing from parts of the Alto Tajo. As the animals feed and move through the landscape, they reduce vegetation and forest biomass while creating more varied pasture conditions.
Rewilding Spain says natural grazing by large herbivores is important for restoring healthy ecosystems because feeding and trampling can reduce the amount of forest biomass available. The organisation states that the horses “reduce forest biomass available in the area”, while their grazing also improves the diversity and quality of pastures used by deer, roe deer, fallow deer and domestic sheep and goats.
Wild horses create a natural firebreak
The Iberian Highlands have extensive areas of forest and vegetation where a lack of large grazers can allow shrubs and other plants to become denser. Rewilding Spain is using natural grazing as one way of changing that vegetation structure. By eating grasses, shrubs and other plants and moving through the landscape, the horses help create more open areas and a mixture of different vegetation types.
The wider rewilding initiative explicitly links this work with wildfire prevention. Horses can help make landscapes more heterogeneous and richer in terms of biodiversity, which it considers important for reducing vulnerability to wildfires. Its Iberian Highlands programme also says horses are helping to open up areas affected by past fires, increasing structural diversity and creating a landscape mosaic that can support regeneration.
Wild horses expand large-herbivore grazing in Spain
The return of Przewalski’s horses is also part of a wider programme to restore large-herbivore grazing across the Iberian Highlands. Rewilding Spain is working with Przewalski’s horses alongside Serrano and Pottoka horses and tauros cattle in different parts of the landscape. The organisation says the combined management of large herbivores now covers tens of thousands of hectares, to support forest regeneration, biodiversity and wildfire prevention.
The horses are also becoming part of the region’s nature-tourism economy. Their presence has already attracted visitors to Villanueva de Alcorón, where guided trips allow people to see the animals living independently in the landscape.
