A script already seen
Here we go again! After the Parco del Matese, which saw the light of day despite justified criticism and opposition from local communities, this time it's Sicily, with the Iblei Park, that's trying to demonstrate the unchallenged power of a few politicians backed by longtime administrators and bureaucrats, all busy seeking additional funds to secure positions and generous salaries for presidents, general managers, and management committees. And salaries for a few dozen (or hundreds) more rangers who roam around in expensive off-road vehicles to ensure mushrooms, blackberries, snails, and truffles aren't picked, and to ensure the construction of chicken coops, stables, and farmhouses that blight the rural landscape, scarring it far more severely than the gigantic and immobile wind farms that have fueled eco-mafias for years. Unfortunately, this is the reality behind the mania for creating new parks, even though the official motivations are always the same, made up of almost always empty buzzwords aimed at convincing as many people as possible by creating false expectations: "The establishment of the Park will guarantee unified protection and foster local development based on the valorization of cultural and natural heritage, quality agriculture, and sustainable tourism."
An unenviable record
In this way, wonderful Sicily, which with its precious autonomy as a Special Statute Region has already achieved the unenviable record of seasonal forestry workers, is poised to climb to fourth place among Italy's largest national parks. The future Iblei National Park, in fact, would extend over approximately 146.735 hectares across the provinces of Syracuse, Ragusa, and Catania, encompassing 27 municipalities with 4.770.232 residents. It would be located below the Etna Regional Park and among a small group of five protected areas that have sprung up like mushrooms: Pantalica and Anapo Valley Reserve; Cavagrande del Cassibile Nature Reserve; Sugherata di Niscemi Nature Reserve; Bosco di San Pietro Nature Reserve; and Vendicario Wildlife Oasis Nature Reserve.
Parcophile escalation
Is everything beautiful? No, because there are plenty of paradoxes in this latest escalation of park-loving. Let's look at them. The island already has 80 (eighty) protected areas: 1 National Park, 4 Regional Parks, 75 Regional Nature Reserves, and the creation of a new, enormous regional park seems redundant. Not everyone knows, in fact, that Sicily, at 25.832 km3, is the largest region in Italy, but it also has the smallest (almost pathetically) forested area: just 8% of the Sicilian territory is actually forested, compared to the national average of 38%. To be more precise, forests in Sicily occupy only 34.267 hectares out of 2,58 million hectares of land. And yet, despite this, and despite the army of seasonal workers – and the WWF says so – “the Island leads the sad Italian ranking for areas affected by fire, offering a dramatic picture of forests reduced to the bone by increasingly frequent fires (77% are caused by arson) and a regional system that invests more in extinguishing than in planting”.
Dramatic situation
According to our "wise" administrators, there is nothing better to remedy this dramatic environmental situation than establishing another beautiful park, spending a significant portion of public resources on it, billing it as a major future business of social, economic, touristic, and environmental nature. The real business, however, is simply the creation of yet another bureaucratic juggernaut that will be another ecological failure. Marisa Calafiura, regional president of the Libera Caccia association, was therefore right to issue a timely and detailed statement (reported on the website), emphasizing the absurdity of a measure that, in addition to imposing new and increasingly stringent restrictions, will further exacerbate the already problematic proliferation of wild boars throughout the region (Paolo Sparvoli, president of the National Libera Caccia Association).
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