Italy’s forest area has tripled

Italy’s forest area has tripled in the last eighty years. But it is plundered like a self-service shop. On the way with lumberjacks in the Apennines.

Beech forest on the Apennines.

P. Jaccod / De Agostini / Getty

It’s still dark, but Luciano and his people are already at work. They throw thin, long pieces of wood onto the back of their pickup truck – fuel for the wood-fired oven of a pizzeria in Rome. The Italian capital is close, only 70 kilometers to the west. But here, in Belmonte in Sabina, you are far away from everything.

Luciano is the boss, he’s been selling firewood for over twenty years. Today he no longer helps himself. While his men load the small truck, he fiddles with his mobile phone. The picture on Luciano’s Whatsapp profile shows two masked people with guns. “Uomini d’onore” is written, honorable men. It’s the cover of a music CD with original recordings of mafia songs. Maybe Luciano is just flirting. In the wild east of Rome it’s part of being naughty. The men here are of a different breed.

Lots of petty thieves

In fact, however, there are many shady machinations in the timber business, laws count for little. Especially in the south of Italy, where the Mafia controls the timber trade in many areas and often uses the forest as an illegal landfill. In the Lazio region, here in the central Apennines, the clans are less established. There are many petty thieves for that. In a neighboring village of Belmonte, for example, the municipal clerk made money: he secretly sold the loggers the logging rights to forest areas whose owners had died and whose heirs could not be found.

Almost two thirds of the forest areas in Italy are in private hands. However, if a private forest owner wants to fell trees, he would have to report this to the municipality. But the “Tagliaboschi” often help themselves without being asked; no one prevents them. The Apennines have experienced a great rural exodus. In many villages only a few people live, or they are completely uninhabited. There are areas here where you won’t meet a soul for days.

The control bodies are also absent. The state forest police was disbanded six years ago for reasons of economy, and the majority of the corps was incorporated into the carabinieri. Since then, activities in the forests have only been sparsely controlled.

Hard work for little money

As Luciano leaves with the first of three 40-ton loads, his men go to the stable and prepare the mules: they saddle them to act as loading platforms and position the animals in rank and file, ready to set off.

The mules do the most arduous work. They carry the roughly felled wood from the steep slopes back to the base station, where it is further broken up. Animals are often used in this zone of the Apennines. Very few lumberjacks can afford heavy machines that can handle the sloping terrain. Firewood is a poor deal here.

The wood is delivered by truck directly to the pizzeria in Rome.

The wood is delivered by truck directly to the pizzeria in Rome.

Marc Zollinger

As in Belmonte, it’s mostly locals who control the business. The work is then done almost exclusively by foreigners. They come from Eastern Europe, where people are experienced in clearing the forests: Romania, Albania, Macedonia. It’s cheap labor. Luciano pays his men 60 euros a day. If you are lucky, you will earn 1200 euros a month. If work is canceled due to bad weather, you get nothing. That’s how almost everyone does it here, that is, on the Apennines south of Florence. In the north, the timber business is more lucrative and better organised.

The Apennines

The chain of hills of the Apennines is mostly forested

The Apennines - The chain of hills of the Apennines is mostly forested

There is a well-functioning industry there that processes wood for construction or furniture production. In the center and in the south, the trees are almost exclusively made into firewood. Wood of better quality grows here. There are extensive oak forests, but also rich mixed forests of beech, ash, chestnut trees and elms. Luciano sells a hundredweight of firewood for only ten euros. Depending on the variety, you pay up to five times more in Switzerland.

The leader of Luciano’s men calls himself Rambo. The 54-year-old gave himself the name because he thinks it suits him well. Rambo comes from Albania and fled to Bari in 1998 in a rubber dinghy. He struggled through the first years in Naples. For twelve years he has worked as a lumberjack in Belmonte, where he now feels at home. Rambo is the man for the rough stuff. “No one is faster with a chainsaw,” says Nicola, at 26 the youngest in the group.

Luciano in front of his truck.

Luciano in front of his truck.

Marc Zollinger

Born in Romania, Nicola moved to Italy with his parents when he was six. He has always loved working in nature. But since the doctors discovered a heart defect and he hit his hip while cleaning the branches, he has been looking for an alternative. “This is work for tough men,” says Nicola. He would love to work as a car mechanic. But positions are rare.

Paolo also belongs to the group. He is Italian and comes from Belmonte. He used to help out on the estate his father leased. However, because the work was no longer profitable, operations were discontinued in the early 1990s. After that, Paolo worked as a tractor driver on one of the large farms on the plain below, until that too went bankrupt. Agriculture has long ceased to flourish here. Only the forest remained.

Italy has become a “woodland” without being noticed

And the forest grows and grows. In the past eighty years, the area of ​​forest in Italy has tripled, according to the environmental organization Legambiente 2021 in one report held. 37 percent of the country’s area is covered with forest today; in particularly mountainous regions such as Abruzzo, the proportion is already over 50 percent.

2019 marked a special turning point: In this year, for the first time in centuries, the forested areas exceeded those used for agriculture. Legambiente writes in its report: “Italy has become a woodland without being aware of it.”

The sea and the beaches are the hallmarks of Italy, not the forest. But that could change in the future, especially when you consider the dramatic consequences of climate change. Seen in this way, the forest represents an immense treasure. However, Italians have yet to recognize its value.

A consequence of the rural exodus

The reason for the increase in forest area is the aforementioned rural exodus. The floe yielded less and less, and the economic boom of the golden 1960s attracted people to the metropolitan areas. In short: where man retreated, nature benefited.

The lumberjacks in Belmonte show what that means in concrete terms. While Rambo operates the chainsaw at the base station, the other two make their way into the terrain. Paolo knows the area like the back of his hand and explains what it used to look like here. The forest path he is walking on was a field path thirty years ago. Grain was grown on both sides, or the areas served as pasture for cows, sheep or goats. On the slopes closer to the village, the residents planted vegetables and fruit. Today dense forest grows everywhere here.

After twenty minutes of walking, the group reaches their destination. It is a steep slope where the logs are already lying ready for transport. The trees were felled in the days before. The twigs and thinner branches with which no business can be made are left lying. In summer, when forest fires are raging again, this easily combustible carpet poses a great danger. But the authorities look the other way, and the loggers are fine with it.

The transport of the wood in the steep slopes is tedious, mules do the most arduous work.

The transport of the wood in the steep slopes is tedious, mules do the most arduous work.

Marc Zollinger

There are also plastic bottles, packaging material and all sorts of other rubbish lying around here and there – a common sight in these parts of the Apennines. For the men who are here, the forest is dead matter, a self-service shop. The fact that one should take care of it or even be thankful for the generosity of nature are concepts from another planet for them.

Rules nobody cares about

However, there are rules. Each region of the country has its own. Detailed decrees state which trees may be felled, where and how exactly. Depending on the altitude, the time is limited to a period between October and March. The loggers then cut down more than they can process and leave the trees unprocessed. So there is also work in the field during the summer months.

Clear-cutting is generally used in the central regions of the Apennines. However, it is not completely shaved off. The law stipulates that individual trees must be left 10 to 15 meters apart. These are the guide trees for the young forest that will grow in the future. Such shaved areas are still considered forest; even if it doesn’t look like it anymore. From afar, these areas look like huge wounds. After just a few years, however, little is left of it. Trees can usually only be felled again at this point 16 years later.

Nicola and Paolo now place the logs on the backs of the mules. Stoic and sure-footed, they accept the hardships. It is reminiscent of biblical times, as the animals, fully laden, walk back the forest path in rank and file. They tackle the track four times that day. At the end the mules are dead tired and their fur is covered in sweat.

Around noon Luciano is back from the city; ready for the next load. If you ask the boss about the regulations on how and where the trees have to be felled, he shakes his hands and says: “What regulations? Here I decide! »

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