Environmental associations are ready to protest outside the headquarters of the Tuscany Region to save the Apuan Alps from mining activities. The sit-in is already organized: meeting tomorrow at 4 pm in front of the headquarters of the regional council of Tuscany in Florence. At the center of the discussion is the Integrated Plan of the Park that “envisages the reduction of marble quarries in the Park by over 50%, is stuck at the Regional Council of Tuscany. There is pressure not to approve it and continue to dig the mountains without too many rules inside a Park of international importance”.
An initiative that brings together Cai, Legambiente, Wwf, Amici della Terra, Arci, Federazione Speleologica Toscana with the support of Salviamo le Apuane. “The Apuan Alps – write the associations in the flyer with which they launch the initiative – a splendid mountain range that arose from the sea millions of years ago, represent an ecosystem, naturalistic and landscape excellence of planetary importance; as well as the most important drinking water reservoir – in terms of quality and capacity – of the Tuscany Region. The Regional Park that has included them since 1985 – given that excavation activity in protected natural areas would be prohibited by law – represents a negative unicum in the national and international panorama, and the devastation that is perpetuated inside and outside its borders is considered one of the 43 most emblematic environmental disasters worldwide. Due to the short-sighted environmental policies carried out – at all levels – in recent decades in this territory, many mining sites now renaturalized and closed for decades have been reopened or are reopening, bringing further millionaire profits to the devastating mining industry, to the detriment of people’s health and the environment”.
This is the starting scenario that leads the associations to ask the Tuscany Region for “a Park that finally carries out its function of nature conservation. The immediate environmental restoration – also in light of the new law (cit. Nature Restoration Law) – of all compromised habitats: starting from that now halved hydrographic network that has led to the reduction, destruction and pollution of the vital element water, which in the Apuan Alps represents the primary good for the entire population. The rapid adoption of a timetable for an essential ecological conversion of the local economy, which takes the marble industry out of the dead end of extractivism throughout the Apuan territory, with the progressive closure of all the extraction sites still active in the Park and the promotion of an economic model based on sustainable tourism, organic agriculture, forestry, pastoralism, civil and circular economy”.
