Forest Management Plan for the wooded areas of the Regional State Property ‘Pellegrina, Cinque-miglia and Montagna Magna’

The wooded areas of the Regional State Property ‘Pellegrina, Cinque-miglia and Montagna Magna’ are located in the Calabrian municipalities of Fuscaldo and Mongrassano (CS).

The Management Plans cover an area of 2,000 hectares and involve the use of terrestrial laser scanning, an innovative technology that has recently been introduced in the field of surveying and allows three-dimensional models to be reconstructed by recording single or multiple scans.

In addition to its production function, today’s forests are called upon to perform many other functions, such as nature conservation, landscaping and tourism and recreation.

This leads to increased complexity in forest management, but at the same time offers a great opportunity for public authorities.

The medium- to long-term silvicultural guidelines outlined in the Management Plan are based on the principles of sustainable forest management and naturalistic silviculture, with a particular focus on mitigating the negative effects of climate change.

Particular attention has been paid to a management approach capable of increasing the level of biodiversity of habitats, considering not only the variety and mixture of species present, but also the variety of structural forms of the stands.

In fact, biodiversity is often considered solely in terms of the abundance and mix of species present in a given environment, whereas the way in which species are arranged in space and how this arrangement changes over time can also be very important. In the case of tree stands, this spatial organisation of species depends largely on the forms of management and treatment applied.

Our management is therefore primarily aimed at ensuring the conservation of the forest and ensuring that it can perform all its functions over time, guaranteeing “ecosystem services” today and in the future (CO2 absorption, water and nutrient cycles, prevention of hydrogeological instability, soil conservation, wood and non-wood production, tourism, culture, education, etc.) while minimising human impact.