In the context of our 3rd General Assembly, we visited the beech forests of Mount Amiata, in the provinces of Siena and Grosseto, at elevations between 1000 and 1400 meters on rich volcanic soils. We were received by our hostesses at Abbadia San Salvatore.
We visited public and private forests, managed by two groups of municipalities: Unione dei Comuni Amiata Vald’Orcia and Unione dei Comuni dell’Amiata Grossetana, which entrusted the management to the Consorzio Forestale dell’Amiata Grosetana and a group of private forest owners Società Macchia Faggeta .
There were three Study Cases at “Pian dei Reani“, “Macchia Faggeta” and “Pozzo Stella and Marsiliana“, where the researchers from CREA and DAGRI at the University of Florence explained us the origin and the traditional way of management of their forests, with grazing, firewood and charcoal production and the production of poles for fruit trees. They explained how management has evolved from coppice to high forests and the differences between Shelterwood Cuttings and Closer to Nature Silviculture, always in the framework of certified Sustainable Forest Management.
Forest researchers explained the work they are doing to evaluate the different forest carbon sinks and the effects of different management systems, both with the traditional Sequential Forest Cover and the more innovative Continuous Forest Cover. They provided detailed stand and harvest data from previous and actual conditions, showing a general improvement in forest indicators and adequate protection of the soil and other species in all cases. Harvesting operations were carried out on a sunny but freezy day and we could see the felling of a large beech tree among a dense layer of younger beechs.
At Pozzo Stella and Marsiliana we visited the comparison plots of a proposed demonstrative forest of Prosilva Italia, with the traditional first thinnings of Traditional Stand Silviculture (SS) and the Tree-oriented Silviculture (TS) applied on a dense beech stand of around 45 years. This was an excellent example of the work that is being done on the Work Package 4 of SMURF, on Closer to Nature Silviculture.
However, the most fascinating learning experience came from the “Shared Forest Macchia Faggeta” owned by a society of more than 4,000 forest owners, that was created in 1788 and formally registered in 1800, after the disentailment of the forest owned by the abbey of San Salvatore, with the laws of 1783 of Peter Leopold of Habsburg-Lorraine, the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Rather than dividing the forest, as was common at the time, the villagers who had traditionally used it collectively purchased and registered it to be managed jointly. This is one of the oldest examples of shared forest management in Europe, demonstrating the diverse ways in which Europeans have historically maintained and sustainably managed their forests.
Portoferraio, settembre 1788. Il regolamento per le Chiese
Storie di uomini e di faggi: la Società Macchia Faggeta
This case study provides valuable insights for the report on the situation of Small Forest Holdings in Europe, part of Work Package 2 of the SMURF project. The story has been documented in an excellent book by Marina Calloni and Barbara Adamanti (2013), accessible here.
