Sheep nibble Madrid's largest park into shape

It's a rustic scene: sheep graze placidly on grass as a shepherd keeps watch. But this is Madrid's largest public park, not the tranquil countryside.

Madrid city hall has since February employed 500 sheep to munch undergrowth at the Casa de Campo, a former royal hunting ground with pines and scrubland stretching over 1,722 hectares -- an area about five times the size of New York's Central Park.

The goal is to reduce the risk of wildfires by clearing vegetation in an environmentally-friendly way while also helping to educate the Spanish capital's roughly 3.2 million residents about rural life.

"It's a very efficient method to prevent wildfires in a much more natural way," said Beatriz Garcia San Gabino, 46, who is in charge of managing Madrid's green spaces. "Instead of clearing scrub with machines, you use sheep which don't consume fuel and don't erode or contaminate the soil."