The National Park of Falterona Mount, Campigna and Casentino forests

di Lorenzo Pazzi
in Memoria e Ricerca n.s. 1 (1998), p. 129

Nowadays, it happens more frequently that actions of environment politics are established for the safeguarding of areas of different kind (national parks, regional parks, ecc.). That is usually the right occasion to discuss and reflect on the questions which concern the relationship between the population involved and the resources of the territory. An historical analysis of this relationship give us the instruments to better understand the process in action. The national park of Falterona Mount, Campigna and Casentino forests consisted of a limited territory that, through the centuries, has been exploited in many different ways: to start from the speculative way employed by the Opera del Duomo di Firenze, to the enlightened action of the Camaldoli monks community, to the sylviculture, rationally applied by the Lorena thanks to the work of his bohemian forestal attendant, Karl Siemon, and finally, to the exploitation done by the local population for his own subsistence. In the same time in which the anthropic pressure on the forests lowered (because of the phenomenon of depopulation) the first instances for the protection of the environment were advanced; then, in two different but close moments, these proposals were finally realized, so that the territory in question was established as a National Park (1993). In the appendix, the interview to Fabio Clauser, managing director of the domain of the Casentino forests from 1950 to 1970.