La pianificazione forestale in Sicilia: storia e recenti evoluzioni

In Sicily, forest planning has recently had a significant evolution, required both for reasons requested by the European and national authorities, and for an objective necessity of the territory. From a regulatory point of view, the history of the last decades has seen Sicily adopt laws and juridically avant-garde and far-sighted from the point of view of the conservation of the natural heritage. In fact, reference is made to forest management plans for the management of the island's forest heritage from the regional laws of 1989, 1996 and 2004 with the issue of regional guidelines and of Regional Law 14/2006. The latter in particular referred to the need to prepare "... the regional forestry plan on the basis of the elements of knowledge inferable from the regional forest inventory and the regional forest map", and introduced, at company level, the concept of a sustainable forest management plan. The troubled drafting of the first regional forest plan was completed in 2010, without the support of the inventory and the forest map, drafted later for contingent reasons. The first PFR was a wide-ranging document, with a description of the territory in its various aspects, and technical and financial instruments. However, the analysis, although detailed, was based on elements that were partly dated and partly insufficiently detailed, due to the shortcomings illustrated. The objectives and implementation of the Plan were also clear and well-articulated, aimed above all at the increase of the forest area and the correct management of it through company management plans, also proposing examples of planning at the territorial level. Equipped with a shared environmental report and practical operational guidance documents, it was drafted for the 2009-2013 program period. The approval of the SEA also underlined the need for an update on the basis of the forest inventory and the regional forest map which in the meantime had seen the light. In fact emerged the limits related to the shortcomings of the description of the forest resources of the regional territory, which is rather approximate because it is based on the INFC - 2005 therefore with insufficient detail, both the lack of executive tools for a clear planning and settling approach. The lack of the aforementioned tools did not allow the definition of specific interventions for the Sicilian forest heritage. To date, the planning regulations have been disregarded: there are very few Sicilian forest areas in which a management plan has been drawn up, regarding the public properties that make up the most important part of the Sicilian forest heritage. The region has prepared a proposal to update the PFR with significant innovations. The knowledge part was updated on the basis of the new regional forest information system, and above all the adoption of the forest typological system. On the basis of the latter, for each type, guidelines have been drawn up for the specific crop management of the island's formations, with details for the forests of greater ecological and productive importance. In the update of the Regional Forestry Plan, in particular for the drafting of the management guidelines at forest level level, the results obtained with the project Life 11+ RESILFORMED- RESILIENCE to climate change of the MEDiterranean FORestry have been taken into account, (2012 - 2017) for finding the best technical resolutions to increase the resilience of forest systems to climate change in progress in the Mediterranean area. The proposal hs also pursued the updating of the RFP in fostering forest plann