PROJECT DESCRIPTION
BACKGROUND
Please note this project was financed by instalments. For this reason, the same project may appear in different year’s submissions. With each instalment, the duration, content and budget of the projects were usually amended. The starting date only, remains the same. This project is part of a multi-beneficiaries project; and therefore the summaries are the same for each sub-project.
The Po Delta and the adjacent Adriatic coast is the largest and biologically most diversified coastal wetland in Italy. It includes a complex of estuaries, lagoons, dunes, pinewoods, temporary pools and reedbeds still in a relatively natural state that makes it an area of particular European interest, especially in terms of the Habitats Directive. Moreover, it is very important for numerous bird species (c. 350) some of which are listed in Annex I of the Birds Directive, including the bittern (Botaurus stellaris) and the pygmy cormorant (Phalacrocorax pygmeus), which are among the most endangered in the EU.
The area has traditionally been used for agriculture, fish and shellfish farming, hunting and reed cutting, but the intensification of the former two combined with increasing tourism are threatening the natural habitat. Water pollution and coastal erosion are other threats. In 1993, when this project was launched, Italy’s legislation on protected areas included the Po delta in its list of future parks (either as an inter-regional or a national park). But local authorities, more sensitive to pressures from groups or associations opposed to establishing any kind of restrictions, had not decided which form of protection to adopt, (i.e. inter-regional or national park). As the competent authorities still had to decide which of the two forms they favoured, the ensuing complex legal situation concerning protection status created several technical problems for the preparation of a management plan for the future reserve.
OBJECTIVES
The project consists of several sub-projects. These cover such aspects as specific measures connected to the definition of a management plan for the park, direct conservation works in habitats of European interest located in the natural reserves within the project area, action to protect coastal habitats along the Adriatic against erosion, the purchase and restoration of key sites and improvement of bird habitats within the zones designated under the Ramsar Convention (on wetlands of international importance). Together, they provided an important incentive towards the effective creation of a nature park here.
RESULTS
The second phase of the project resulted in numerous concrete conservation actions, including coastal protection actions, land purchase and bird habitat improvements – as well as the refinement of the management plan for the nature park that had been developed in the first phase of the project. (See: LIFE93 NAT/IT/010500; LIFE93 NAT/IT/010501 and LIFE93 NAT/IT/010502.) Despite the actions, the project was not successful in creating a national park for the Po Delta. This was mainly due to strong political resistance by local lobbies.
The results of the second phase of this multi-beneficiary project are as follows:
1. The development of a management plan for the Po Delta. (This was developed over two project phases.) In the second project phase the action plan was refined to include two new chapters (i.e., on an ecological network and presence of herons). In the first phase, the management plan provided various actions for areas, animal species and activities (i.e., hunting, poaching, ecotourism, etc.) and included a geographic information system (GIS).
2. Numerous direct conservation works were carried out by the project in its second phase. These included actions to protect coastal habitats along the Adriatic against erosion. Note, these works were carried out by the Veneto regional authority (a project beneficiary) and included the installation of windbarriers to safeguard sand banks against erosion in Porto Tolle (Palo di Boccasette e Barricata) and the collection of seeds, growth of plants and planting of vegetation in areas between the windbarriers and the shore-line (entailing approx. 130 000 plants).
- Another project beneficiary, the administrative authority responsible for the province of Ravenna, was responsible for carrying out a series of successful conservation works in a lagoon in Valle Campotto, a proposed SCI and SPA (pSCI and SPA) located within the perimeter of the Po Delta Emilia-Romagna regional park. These works focussed on: improving water circulation (e.g. by canal dredging); protecting embankments (e.g. through planting or trees and eradicating coypus); improving the fauna (e.g. through the elimination of allochthonous fish species and rodent/ coypus); and monitoring water and fish populations. More specifically these actions resulted in the dredging of six canals (entailing moving over 54 000 cubic metres of material), restoration and remodelling of 2 275 metres of embankment of the Ghinghero canal, restoration of hydraulic infrastructures (e.g., sewers and water-pipes), planting of a total of 3 025 plants (e.g., on the embankment), elimination of two allochthonous fish species, the removal of 4 077 coypus (that destroy vegetation and threaten birds), and the development of a survey on water quality and fish populations.
3. Land purchase.
A key accomplishment in the second phase of the project was the purchasing of a total of 79.4 ha of land: 10.9 ha in Porto Caleri; 23.6 ha in Fossils dune in Donada and Contarina, 43.1 ha in Po di Maistra (Cà Pisani) and 1.8 ha near the Dune di Rosolina e Volto. The land acquired in the Porto Caleri site was adjacent to one of the most unique areas in the Po Delta with a wide variety of plant species and habitats such as the priority, Fixed dunes with herbaceous vegetation, (grey dunes), Shifting dunes along the shoreline with Ammophila arenaria (white dunes), Salt steppes, Humid dune slacks, Salicornia and other annuals colonizing mud and sand, Quercus ilex forests and the priority, Wooded dunes with Pinus pinea and/or Pinus pinaster.).
- The land acquired in the Donada, a pSCI, contains the priority Wooded dunes with Pinus pinea and/or Pinus pinaster and priority Fixed dunes with herbaceous vegetation, (grey dunes) habitat. The land acquired in the Cà Pisani locality is within an area which represents one of the last relatively natural valley’s in the region. According to a census taken in 1994, this area includes waterfowl (entailing the wintering of 12 000 individuals), the great white egrets, avocets, cormorants, marsh harriers and common terns. The 1.8 ha purchased adjacent to the pSCI Dune di Rosolina e Volta was carried out so that project actions foreseen could be implemented.
4. Improving habitats for important bird species (i.e., included in the Birds Directive). These included actions to excavate two canals in the Pialassa della Baiona (Fossatone,-Baioncina and Taglio) in order to avoid water stagnation and to create artificial islets for terns and shore birds, using the material dredged from the canals. Other actions included the development of management models for white-eyed Pochard, whiskered tern and gulls and the creation of artificial islands and beaches for terns and shorebirds.