PESCARA. “We make an extreme appeal for the Municipality to bring the interventions back into a unitary and shared framework, with a specific scientific direction envisaged and with the primary objective of recreating the environmental conditions favorable to the balance within the Reserve. There would be no shortage of contributions of ideas, proposals , skills of our associations and our experts”. Thus concludes the note shared by the L.Gorgoni section of Italia Nostra and the Unitary Group for Italian Forests (Owls) after learning of the new interventions that the administration is preparing to carry out in the Dannunziana Reserve.
“Through the declarations of the president of the municipal “Mobility and Security” commission, Armando Foschi, we learn that work is about to begin on the new fence of section 5 (the one destroyed by the fire on August 1, 2023, ed.) to be built with the funds received as a fire insurance premium”, the Associations specify, summarizing: “Foschi also communicated that “the RUP (Sole Responsible for the Procedure, still unknown to us), has authorized the intervention” and that a ” educational facility” and, later, a facility for the elderly”. These are buildings”, underline Italia Nostra ei Gufi, “which, obviously, should be assessed in their impact on the habitat of the Reserve within the naturalistic planning plan appropriately revised in light of the post-fire damage; instead they are made with the usual impromptu project, as if we were in any open space.
The associations express “deep concern” about the announced interventions. Why? “They could be extremely harmful and fatal for the pine forest; we continue to intervene on it, stubbornly treating it like a banal public garden and not as a Nature Reserve. The Municipality does not in any way want to establish the scientific management required by law, it also dismantles the commission consultative body formed after the emergency, but does not stop intervening in the absence of sustainability criteria”.
“We don’t know the project; the Municipality has the rule not to communicate what it intends to do (other than participation, which is appropriate and necessary): it loves to make mistakes in solitude and cause damage to the naturalistic and social capital of the City. We therefore expect no information but the surreal comments and accusations of the (in) competent Councilor given that we have no other means to do so, we would like to remind you through the media that:
– one of the most important critical issues affecting the Pine Forest, known for decades, is the presence of enclosure walls built with foundations that prevent the normal underground flow of rainwater. The water table in the Pine Forest is locally very shallow and when it rains the existing walls and fences cause stagnation, cause persistent flooding and transform the Pine Forest lots into swimming pools. The Aleppo pine, a native species that fears excessive humidity, becomes ill in those conditions due to the roots stagnating in the sandy soil which has become soft and the trees no longer anchored fall profusely to the ground even in the absence of wind. For this reason, the pine forest continues to lose its pines and to see marsh or river-type vegetation established as well as weeds and invasive vegetation such as locust trees, reeds and brambles.
New fences must be designed to be permeable underground and allow the free flow of rainwater! Has this fundamental precaution that we and other experts have been asking for for a few decades been foreseen? Furthermore, is ecological permeability also foreseen since fragmentation and isolation of the ecosystem lead, as science warns, to degradation and collapse?
The objective of ensuring permeability must not only concern the “new fence” announced by Foschi, but also all the existing perimeter ones which must be adapted to favor the best conditions for recovery. Naturally the internal fences between the various compartments must be eliminated, accelerating the reunification of the Pine Forest whose de-fragmentation is one of the main conditions if it is to exist for the future citizens of Pescara.
We make an extreme appeal for the Municipality to bring the interventions back into a unitary and shared framework, with a specific scientific direction envisaged and with the primary objective of recreating the environmental conditions favorable to the balance within the Reserve. There would be no lack of contribution of ideas, proposals and skills from our associations and our experts”. The note concludes:
