We are living in a decisive moment, facing two connected global challenges: the loss of biodiversity and climate change. As rising temperatures accelerate the disappearance of species, it is clear we need to rethink how we live with nature and how we manage our land. Traditional conservation efforts have had mixed success, and more and more attention is turning to restoration – bringing nature back – as a lasting solution.
The UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration and the EU Nature Restoration Law both urge member states to “prevent, halt, and reverse” ecosystem degradation. In Friuli Venezia Giulia (FVG, Italy), a WILDCARD Case Study, nature is already making a comeback: over the past 50–60 years, forest cover has nearly doubled (from 160.000 to over 300.000 ha), now covering around 40% of the region. Much of this change has happened quietly as old pastures and terraced fields were left to rewild, with a warming climate helping forests spread higher up the mountains, as shown in a research by Valentina Olmo (University of Trieste) and a team of researchers from different countries, including WILDCARD Coordinator Giorgio Alberti. Across the EU, the story is similar: since the 1990s, forested areas have increased by about 14 million hectares, clear evidence that passive rewilding is already reshaping the landscape.
Pros and Cons of Rewilding
Olmo and her team caution that more trees do not always mean more biodiversity. Their initial findings have shown that the trajectories of plant and microbial biodiversity in the soil (fungi and bacteria) and those of carbon do not always coincide or are not always positive. Moreover, numerous national and international projects are investigating not only the impacts of natural reforestation on carbon stock dynamics in the various components of the ecosystem and on plant, animal and microorganisms’ biodiversity, but they are also verifying the level of acceptability of these rewilding processes by local populations and the possible economic tradeoffs.
Proforestation: Letting Forests Mature
A complementary approach, proforestation, simply suspends timber management to let stands age naturally. Accumulating deadwood boosts carbon storage and creates microhabitats for fungi, insects, and cavity-nesting birds. The Wildcard project and the newly established Italian National Registry of Old-Growth Forests are studying how unmanaged stands handle climate stress, fire risk, and pests. Whereas scaling proforestation more widely must also weigh timber, water regulation, soil protection, and tourism values. Achieving such a balance will require dialogue among scientists, planners, and stakeholders.
Letting forests regrow naturally or leaving them unmanaged, can help tackle biodiversity loss and climate change. Europe’s restoration policies show how abandoned farmland has turned into forest and weigh the benefits and trade-offs of these approaches for carbon storage, biodiversity, and local economies.
To learn more about it and the case of Friuli Venezia Giulia (FVG), read the article by clicking on the link below (only in Italian):
IL REWILDING PER CONTRASTARE LA PERDITA DI BIODIVERSITÀ E PER MITIGARE IL CAMBIAMENTO CLIMATICO