(ANSA) - Forests are disappearing around the world at an alarming rate but Italy has more woodland than ever, according to a new report.
An annual study of 229 countries and territories by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) shows that the number of forests in Italy is booming.
On average, there are 100,000 more hectares of forest here every year, said the FAO report, which looked at the period from 1990 to 2005.
In total, around a third of Italian land is now covered by forest, amounting to nearly 10 million hectares. "This is a really important increase, confirming a positive trend that has been under way since 2000," said Angelo Mariano of the Italian Forestry Corps, a member of the team that helped
compile the report.
He stressed that the news was particularly significant as previous reports of this trend in Italy had been somewhat misleading, owing to FAO's "wide definition" of what constitutes forest.
"But the latest figures correspond to a real growth", he said, pointing out that the definition was now much tighter, referring only to areas of land that are "larger than 0.5 hectares and with trees taller than five meters."
The boom in forest land is mainly the result of deep-seated changes in Italian society, which continues to shift from agrarian patterns to an industrial model, according to Mariano.
"The abandonment of farmland has ensured that these areas gradually revert to trees," he said. But he also attributed the development to a growing awareness of the importance of trees, resulting in conscious reforestation policies. The European Union's common agricultural policy, for
example, "has earmarked financial incentives for those who choose to set aside part of their farmland for forest plantations," he said.
Proportionally, Italy has the sixth highest amount of forest in Europe, after Sweden, Finland, Spain, France and Germany. But while in most EU nations this land is increasingly moving into public hands, 65% of Italian forests are still privately owned, said FAO.
Despite this, the report was generally upbeat about Italy's forestry policy, praising an increased focus on nature conservation over the last 15 years. The growth in the quantity of Italian forestry is in sharp contrast to the worldwide trend, in which enormous patches of forest are vanishing from the Earth at an alarming rate, said FAO.
The organization noted that an area of woodland the size of Panama is wiped out every year.
