Fireworks Are Not Harmless Fun When Horses Are Dying
Every year, humans turn the sky into a battlefield and call it celebration. Bonfire Night. New Year’s Eve. Weddings. Birthdays. Diwali. Lunar New Year. Random private displays because someone fancied making the neighbourhood sound like a war zone for ten minutes.
For many people, fireworks are treated as harmless fun. A flash, a bang, a cheer, a video for social media, then back inside. For other animals, those few seconds can mean panic, escape, injury, veterinary treatment, and death.
A 2026 study published in Animal Welfare looked at how fireworks affect horses and donkeys in the UK. The researchers surveyed 1,466 equid guardians, including 1,234 horse guardians and 232 donkey guardians. The findings should make anyone defending unrestricted fireworks pause for more than half a second.
63% of horse guardians reported adverse reactions to fireworks. For donkey guardians, the figure was lower at 21%, but that number needs care. Donkeys do not always respond like horses. Horses are more likely to flee. Donkeys may freeze. Humans, being humans, often mistake stillness for calm.
A donkey standing motionless during fireworks may not be “fine.” They may be trying not to be noticed. They may be locked in fear while humans decide they look unbothered because they are not performing distress loudly enough for us to recognise.
Again and again, animals are forced to make their distress legible to the species causing it.
The study found clear behavioural differences. Horses were more likely to run, kick, buck, and rear. Donkeys were more likely to vocalise. Loud bangs and flashing lights were the most commonly reported causes of distress for horses, though organised displays were linked with higher reported fear than private displays.
8% of horse guardians reported fireworks-related injuries. The majority were cuts and lacerations. Others included broken bones, hoof and foot damage, injuries linked to escape and car accidents. Over half required veterinary care. 12% of the reported horse injuries resulted in death. Not mild inconvenience. Not “a bit spooked.” Not someone being oversensitive about tradition.
Death.
Horses died because humans wanted loud decorative explosions. Between November 2010 and March 2024, the British Horse Society recorded more than 1,000 incidents involving horses and fireworks, including 35 deaths and 270 injuries. Even the study notes that underreporting is likely. Which means the real number is probably worse, because it usually is when animals are the victims and humans are the record keepers. The usual response is to push responsibility back onto guardians. Stable them. Stay with them. Move them. Play music. Prepare better.
Some of those measures can help. In the study, many horse guardians tried to reduce the risk. Stabling was common. Moving the animal away from the fireworks was rated as the most effective option. But this is not a solution. It is a forced management plan for a problem other people create.
Stabling a frightened horse may reduce the risk of escape, but confinement can create its own risks when a large, panicked animal cannot get away. Staying with them may help, but it can also put the human at risk if the horse bucks, kicks, or bolts. Moving them elsewhere may be effective, but it requires notice, transport, access to somewhere safer, and an animal who can cope with being moved.
And that is the point.
Mitigation depends on warning.
Unannounced fireworks remove the ability to prepare. Private displays, random garden fireworks, and people letting them off whenever they feel like it place the burden on everyone else. Horses, donkeys, dogs, cats, wildlife, birds, disabled people, babies, veterans, and anyone else affected by sudden explosive noise are expected to simply endure it because someone wanted a sparkle party. What an absurd hierarchy of importance.
A few seconds of human entertainment sits above the safety of other animals. That is the social contract humans keep writing on everyone else’s behalf.
The study also found strong support for tighter regulation. 77% of horse guardians and 81% of donkey guardians agreed that fireworks need tighter controls. The most supported changes were restricting fireworks to specific occasions, imposing noise limits, and banning private displays. None of this is radical.
It is basic accountability.
If fireworks are going to exist at all, people should know when they are happening. There should be strict limits on noise. Private use should not be treated as a personal freedom when the consequences are imposed on every animal and person nearby. “I enjoy this” is not a serious ethical argument when someone else may be injured or killed by the fallout.
The fact that current law already recognises preventing harm to animals as a reason for regulating fireworks makes the inaction even more ridiculous. We already accept the principle. We simply fail to apply it properly. And as usual, animals are expected to pay for the gap between what humans know and what humans are willing to change.
Fireworks are marketed as joy. Celebration. Community. Tradition. But whose joy?
A terrified horse trying to escape a stable is not celebrating. A donkey frozen in fear is not celebrating. A guardian finding blood, broken fencing, or an injured animal in the aftermath is not celebrating. The horse who does not survive is not part of anyone’s harmless fun.
Humans love calling things “tradition” when they do not want to defend them properly.
But tradition does not turn panic into consent. It does not turn injury into entertainment. It does not turn avoidable deaths into acceptable collateral damage.
Fireworks are not just pretty lights in the sky. For some animals, they are terror raining down from a species that still struggles to understand that not everything pleasurable to humans is morally neutral.
If our celebrations require other animals to panic, flee, freeze, bleed, break bones, or die, then the problem is not their sensitivity. The problem is our entitlement.