Evolution and enlargement
Biodiversity in Flight, the project by Fondazione UNA – Man, Nature, Environment – in collaboration with Federparchi, now in its third year, evolves and expands its scope to include European parks, stopping in Sardinia and then Catalonia, to discover two twinned entities operating in completely different contexts. Beginning with Asinara National Park, in the province of Sassari, and continuing to two parks in the Diputació de Barcelona – the Serralada Litoral Park and the Sant Llorenç del Munt i l'Obac Natural Park – the goal of the trip was to compare, within the context of conservation activities in European protected areas, two different models of wildlife management, highlighting commonalities and differences resulting from years of intense collaboration between the park authorities.
Virtuous management of the territory
The idea of virtuous management of the territory and the wildlife that populates it, according to scientific criteria, is one of the key values of the UNA Foundation, which believes in the importance of a rational approach to the preservation of biodiversity, in which also the hunting, characterized as sustainable and responsible, in open opposition to poaching, is inserted as a control tool. “Our objective, and the focus of this project, which sees us engaged with those involved in the protection of species within protected areas, is precisely to place emphasis on the scientific and ecosystem approach to conservation” commented Renata Briano, President of the Scientific Committee of Fondazione UNA. “Biodiversity in Flight was born for this. At Asinara first, and then in Catalonia, we observed how a single common objective, that of management that responds to the needs of ecosystems, can be achieved through very different models. The most evident aspect is the use of hunting activity within the parks in Spain, as a tool of regulation and control: a concrete example of that integration with the scientific and environmental world that, as a Foundation, we promote".
Reason for pride
For Luca Santini, President of Federparchi, "The collaboration with Fondazione UNA, over the years, helps to explain, even outside the boundaries of protected areas, what it means for Italian parks to manage this immense wealth and what our responsibilities are, as an association of managing bodies, but also as men inserted in an ecosystem. We firmly believe in the importance of collaboration between protected areas, even from different realities and different countries. In this sense, it is a source of pride for us to have expanded the collaboration and given it a European dimension."
Various collaborations
Over the years the project has involved numerous Italian natural parks: the Gran Paradiso National Park, the Maremma Regional Park, the Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise National Park, the Nebrodi Natural Park and the Casentinesi Forest National Park: territories in which biodiversity is protected at all levels, from large carnivores to invertebrates, from birds to fish. Fondazione UNA's commitment to bringing the themes dear to the hunting world into the main spaces for discussion and dialogue on biodiversity at an international level has resulted in various collaborations over the years, in addition to the one in place with Federparchi: by becoming part of IUCN, International Union for Nature Conservation, and subsequently of Mountain Partnership - FAO, the Foundation intends to position itself as a reference actor on the issues of conservation and biodiversity.
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