News from the Italian Parks

The actions of "Praterie" quickly go on. To the present day, with the introductory operations being concluded - namely the collection and the analysis of the grazing regulations, the assessment of the big data corpus resulting from the technical and veterinary surveys, the cross study of the naturalistic data provided by the Nature Map - the project can provide an effective and complete picture of the project area. On the basis of this picture both the structural naturalistic engineering works for the renovation of the paths and of the watering troughs, and the sharing initiatives involving all the territorial stakeholders have been planned. The latter is the so-called "human dimension" of the project, that is the participatory process aimed at the development of a framework grazing regulation whose first essential appointment is scheduled on Tuesday 26th November, at the conference hall of the Elodia restaurant within the Park, in Camarda (AQ).

One of the project's main actions is the assessment of the management problems connected with farming, and it has been implemented through monitoring visits, census surveys given out to 107 farms against the 100 that had been planned. Such visits made it possible to collect useful data on the farm management modalities and on the needs expressed by the zootechnical entrepreneurs as far as the watering troughs are concerned too.
The action allowed veterinarians to start spreading best practices in order to improve the sanitary aspects and the general farm management, and to launch the collection of the expressions of interest for the entrusting with the materials for the building of sustainable structures for the cattle safeguard on the high altitude pastures.

Also the action related to the spread of best practices for the sheep farming concluded its experimentation stage of four different tensile structures used as a shelter for the lambs by as many farmers. Even in this case, since the experimentation showed to be a best practice itself, the procedures for the expressions of interest will be launched soon in order to give out a sufficient number of tensile-structures for free in view of the next spring.

As far as the water problem is concerned, thanks to a series of cross surveys carried out by the engineers and the veterinarians in charge, all the watering troughs situated in the Campo Imperatore area have been registered. On the basis of the needs expressed by the farmers a priority scale for the requalification, restoration and reconstruction works has been developed. Through scientific studies also the conservation conditions and priorities of the high altitude lakes - habitat of the northern crested newt, namely one of the endangered species whose safeguard is one of the project's general goals - have been assessed.