“An anniversary that aims to instill in the new generations – underlines the Regional Coordinator of Fareambiente, Benedetto Miscioscia – respect and love for nature and for the defense of trees. Furthermore, in 1992, law no. 113 of 29 /01/1992, which remained largely ignored, which introduced the obligation for municipalities with more than 15,000 inhabitants to plant a tree for every newborn registered in the municipal registry, which remained largely unimplemented. In the meantime, we remain astonished at the learn from the first Report on the state of the Forests and the Forestry sector (RaF) together with the Crea – Council for Research in Agriculture and analysis of the Agricultural Economy, that 85% of the forested area of our country, which has increased from 6 million hectares from 1936 to 11 million in 2015, is not the result of planning planned by the Regions or the State, but the result of a “spontaneous colonization of marginal areas”. At present it must be noted that most of our forests are abandoned to themselves, beyond the interventions aimed at preventing possible fires through the creation of fire zones imposed by law. What is missing, beyond an effective planning policy linked to the planting of new plants if we want to follow up on a serious policy for the containment of climate change, is the care of our forests for which, to date, we are not aware that funds have been allocated not only to carry out cleaning and maintenance interventions but also to start reforestation projects for those woods destroyed by fires”.
“Yet the forest is an environmental and landscape resource which must now be cared for and managed more and better than before, if it is true that over 80% of hydrogeological disruptions are of forest origin and that a third of Italy is forested, due to failure to clean biomass and necromass of dried trees and branches, is highly exposed to the risk of fires. One more reason for the Puglia Regional Government to seriously consider National Tree Day, to commit to seriously investing resources for care and maintenance of our forests as well as for their reconstitution. Investments, which in the last 15 years we are not aware of, have been made either to improve the existing forests or to carry out forestry hydraulic arrangement works which Puglia would need, considering the high hydrogeological risk of various areas. The appeal is to implement environmental policies that aim not only to improve the protection, conservation and valorization of forest ecosystems together with the protection of biodiversity – which is also compromised by the devastating action of wild fauna due to enormous and uncontrolled increase in the number of wild boars – but also to plan the creation of new forests in areas with a low forest density, to also prevent hydrogeological instability. It is necessary, finally, to acquire the culture and sensitivity to understand with facts that plants are not simple elements of street furniture, often even sacrificed or suffocated with their roots in the concrete of a sidewalk, but real living beings whose we cannot do without, useful not only for improving the quality of life and the air we breathe in our cities, but also for reducing the concentration of CO2 and combat fine dust in the atmosphere”, concludes the Regional Coordinator of Fareambiente, Benedetto Miscioscia.
