Among rewilding mountains: grassland conservation and abandoned settlements in the Northern Apennines

Andreas Haller,Oliver Bender

doi:10.1080/01426397.2018.1495183

Abstract

ABSTRACTDue to agricultural abandonment and the urban preference for ‘wilderness’ over ‘rural’ areas, abandoned settlements and rewilding grasslands are often the last traces of agriculture in today’s protected areas of the Northern Apennines. However, since the late 1990s, an increasing number of policy makers have appreciated these spatial manifestations of the nature/culture gestalt and developed projects to conserve the last grasslands in rewilding protected areas. Does the land cover reflect these changing attitudes? Using the Foreste Casentinesi National Park as our case in point, we aim to (1) detect land cover changes during 1990–2001 and 2001–2010; (2) analyse change trajectories; and (3) reveal potential discrepancies between the conservation of biodiversity and rural built heritage. Our results show that grassland loss dominated 1990–2001, whereas grassland maintenance/restoration can be observed for 2001–2010. However, the decadence of the rural built heritage seems to continue.

Highlights

In many Southern European mountain regions, the complementary processes of urbanisation and deagrarianisation have led to changes in rural land use practices, often leading to the complete abandonment of agricultural land since the 1950s
The case study in the Foreste Casentinesi National Park clearly shows that attitudinal changes are reflected by the land cover
This research comes to the conclusion that the maintenance/restoration of grasslands among rewilding mountains is primarily driven by the aim of conserving biodiversity—and not at all by the desire to conserve the spatial manifestation of the nature/culture gestalt in a Sauerian understanding

Summary

Introduction

In many Southern European mountain regions, the complementary processes of urbanisation and deagrarianisation have led to changes in rural land use practices, often leading to the complete abandonment of agricultural land since the 1950s (on European mountains in general see MacDonald et al, 2000; on Mediterranean mountains in particular see Papanastasis, 2012). In a case study in the Borau Valley of the Spanish Pyrenees, an area characterised by severe depopulation during the 20th century, Vicente-Serrano, Lasanta, and Cuadrat (2000) noticed increased woody vegetation on former agricultural land and called this process the ‘banalization of landscape’. 622) detected large increase in forest areas in the Alps and Apennines between 1960 and 2000. The Apennines, which Goethe in his Italian Journey called ‘ein merkwürdiges Stück Welt’ (‘a remarkable part of the world’), presented a large decrease in pastures

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