 |
The nature sanctuaries managed by WWF Italia are nowadays 117, and cover about 30,000 hectares of territory - 6,500 hectares of which belong to WWF -, scattered everywhere: a complex and articulated protected areas system, the largest one managed by a private Association in Italy and among the main ones in Europe.
In the WWF Nature Sanctuaries almost all the natural environments of our Country are represented, to the extent that they form a homogeneous and representative system of the Italian natural ecosystems: from the alpine grasslands to the gypsum coasts, from the largest wetland system in Italy to wild canyons, from waterfalls to caves, from plain woods to the Mediterranean forests, from the peaks covered with snow to the steppe, from the beech tree woods to the wild hedges. There are areas which without WWF would have been disappeared, and thanks to its help abandoned, degraded, and over-exploited areas have been brought back to life. Animals and plants diminishing everywhere have found in the Nature Sanctuaries a safe shelter, others have been recovered: like the Sardinian deer, now safe from extinction, or the wolf, in constant growth, or the otter, which still has some possibilities to be saved; the same can be said for the several plants, often endemic species, or for those less and less widespread vegetal complexes like the fir woods along the Apennines, the hygrophilous woods, the evergreen forests. Several environments which are protected in the nature sanctuaries are part of endangered ecosystems at a European level, or they house transcontinental migratory species. |
