At the headquarters of the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Transition in Rome, a meeting was held on the topic of initiatives and interventions to combat the fire phenomenon in Sicily, whose request for meeting and discussion was forwarded by Federparchi through President Luca Santini.
Present at the meeting were the Undersecretary for the Environment Sen. Claudio Barbaro, the Head of the Technical Secretariat of the Undersecretary for the Environment Ettore De Conciliis, the Regional Councilor for Territory and Environment of the Sicilian Region Hon. Elena Pagana, the Commissioner Luca Ferlito, the general manager of the Environment Department of the Sicilian Region Patrizia Valenti, Colonel of the Carabinieri (CUFA) Florimondo Forleo and Colonel Renato Sciunnach, the Regional Coordinator of Federparchi Sicilia Marco Mastriani and the director of Federparchi Francesco Carlucci. An interesting meeting and discussion which gave rise to the need and convergence between the participants present, in implementing all possible solutions useful for combating the serious phenomenon of forest and vegetation fires in Sicily.
According to the data, during the year 2023, the Sicily region was the one with the largest surfaces of areas affected by fires, i.e. over 45,000 hectares of the over 74,000 hectares counted in the entire national territory. Even the data for the first five months of 2024 confirm an alarming situation with 58 fires already recorded compared to the 44 recorded in the same period last year.
A notable effort in this sense has already been made by the Sicilian Region in strengthening all those useful tools for better efficiency in extinguishing fires with the use of new means, sophisticated technological innovation systems useful for the prevention and monitoring of the phenomenon and with the anticipation of the forest fire campaign by a month.
What emerged from the meeting was the willingness on the part of the CUFA representatives present at the meeting to be able to start a process of collaboration between the CUFA and in general the Carabinieri with the Sicilian Region and the Forestry Corps of the Sicilian region, to make available its skills and professionalism also in the technological field for training and specialization courses for the units in the field, to be able to provide operational departments capable of intervening in the most sensitive areas threatened by fires starting from the 2024 firefighting season in order to monitor, combat and repress the phenomenon of fires and also be able to start a more organic and organised, long-term path that could affect the entire Sicilian regional territory.
The Sicilian Region has expressed its willingness to start a process of collaboration with the Carabinieri but obviously, as provided for by the law of 21 November 2000 n.353, it must send a request to start the appropriate agreements as it is a region with special statute .
Marco Mastriani, Territorial Coordinator of Federparchi Sicilia states: “I thank the Undersecretary for the Environment Sen. Claudio Barbaro and all his staff for having accepted our request for a meeting with environmental sensitivity and after having acknowledged the full availability of the Carabinieri including the CUFA, a true European and international excellence in the field of environmental protection and combating environmental crimes, I ask the Sicilian Region to urgently send the request for collaboration as required by law and to immediately be able to implement all useful actions to strengthen the monitoring, prevention, control and repression system of the serious phenomenon of forest and vegetation fires in Sicily, starting from this season, whose data from last year unfortunately confirm that the phenomenon has become a national emergency and we must make all possible efforts to protect our natural heritage. From the meeting it emerged clearly and unequivocally that both in the immediate and in the long term there are useful solutions that can seriously combat the phenomenon, as has already happened in other Italian regions and at the same time the Sicilian Region proceeds with announcing competitions for new additions of Forestry Corps units in order to make up for the serious shortage of personnel in the regional context. We need to intervene now, with maximum collaboration between all the institutions for a common objective, the defense of nature.”
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