La biodiversità delle formazioni naturali e seminaturali in Sicilia: cambiamenti e ipotesi di gestione

A large part of the natural formations that occupied the surface of Sicily have disappeared because of heavy transformations beginning from the ancient time. These transformations have provoked the disappearance of entire communities plants and animals but the entity of these modifications can be only partially appreciated or assumed on the base of fragmentary data. Scope of this study is to evaluate changes in plant and animal communities in the course of the centuries. Until the end of the nineteenth century on the whole an equilibrium was established in the Island. The agricultural activity had surely changed the proportions of the habitats contributing to the spread of open spaces communities to the detriment of forest communities. The domestic animals effectively replaced the communities of wild mammals and the “transumanza” (seasonal migration of domestic animals from mountain to plains and vice versa) contributed to distribute in the space and the time the animal load. The last forest communities become where simplified by utilization. The last century has seen radical changes that provoked conflicting results on the biodiversity. Changes in agriculture had negative effects on the entire system while lack of forest management became a factor of decrease of their values. In the same time the huge and meritorious activities of reforestation encountered environmental limitations but also lack of early evaluation of the techniques that would have effectively address the future activities of reforestation.