Recognizing millennia of cultural and spiritual heritage at the Majella National Park, Abruzzo, Italy

Ecology and biodiversity

The iconic Majella Massif has its highest point at 2,800m ASL. Limestone is predominant, dotted by countless caves, and both underground and surface waters. The massif consists of large plateaus, largely located above 2,000m, interrupted by deep valleys. The plateaus have been used as summer pastures for millennia. This has likely contributed to their remarkable plant diversity (nearly 30% of Italian flora is found within the Park). Wildlife includes some of the most important roe deer and wolf populations in the Italian Apennines. While the isolation of the area facilitates conservation, major threats derive from the disappearance of species-rich grasslands and agricultural landscapes due to discontinued traditional management. Speculative building in tourist areas also represents an impending problem.

Governance

The Park is an IUCN type II PA governed by a public authority that responds to the Ministry of the Environment. Park governance aims at transparently conciliating the interests of 39 municipalities and 6 ‘mountain districts’. Strategic planning is oriented by a consultation with local administrators (2002). Other major stakeholders include famers, herders, tourist developers, and dioceses, although there is no evident mechanism for systematically including them in Park governance. Important areas of the Park fall within ancient privileges of customary law (usi civici, comparable to the commons) that should grant land governance and management to consortia of local residents. This occasionally engenders ownership conflicts between local institutions and the Park Authority, and management conflicts between local uses (including animal grazing and forestry) and EU directives.

Management

The Park Authority manages the PA in collaboration with the Forestry Service. Current management strategies are largely geared towards tourist promotion. The main management conflicts arise between traditional activities (mountain agriculture, animal husbandry) and wildlife repopulation. These may stem not only from material interests but even competing worldviews. Other tensions exist around what cultural heritage to valorize, and what meaning(s) to emphasize. Local people are especially proud of their traditions and products; clergymen are often critical of folk devotions and rather stress monasticism and religious art. Park staff occasionally consider cultural heritage a management issue that clashes with the priorities of nature conservation. Traditional land management techniques (e.g., pollarding, silvo-pastoralism), although supported in theory, remain scarcely incentivized in practice.

Lessons Learned

Based on a number of accounts, the Majella NP appears as one of Italian PAs enjoying broadest support from local populations. Acknowledging cultural/spiritual values of nature in Park management and interpretation has been key to this success. Original lessons learned/best practices include:

1. Recognizing that traditional activities are not perturbations of the environment, but co-evolved heritage that can enhance biodiversity. Traditional productive practices are often embedded in the spiritual worldviews of local population. In current Park management, they are supported through marketing networks and a fairly reliable system of compensations for wildlife damages. Surviving ritual practices focusing on biodiversity are also encouraged, recognizing their role for community cohesion and heritage tourism.
2. Zoning based on cultural, not only environmental considerations. The Park is divided in 4 zones with different management. In areas where meaningful interactions with the environment were never in place or have long disappeared, wilderness-inspired protection is implemented. However, in areas where meaningful human-environment interactions are present, priority is given to sustaining traditional uses (de facto as in IUCN type V PA). This compromise permits to accommodate different and even competing values of nature and conservation goals, and to respect the traditions that preceded institution of the PA.
3. Emphasizing continuity between cultures and beliefs in landscape interpretation. The distinctive cultural elements of the Majella NP – pastoralism, hermitism, monasticism, pre-Christian worships, folk traditions – are strictly related, one having often paved the way to the others. In some cases, local productive activities encapsulate these relations. Underlining continuity between these histories allows to embrace multiple interpretations of a layered heritage, and not exclude previous or alternative meanings. This also favors more inclusive and democratic relations among stakeholders.

Conclusion

Although perfectible, the experience of the Majella NP shows ways to reconcile multiple meanings of a complex cultural heritage in the framework of nature conservation. Similarly, it showcases some benefits of integrating local cultural and spiritual values in PA management. In particular, including cultural and spiritual value in Park interpretation appears an effective means to recognize local people’s role in shaping and safeguarding the landscape and make them feel part of a PA’s mission rather than strangers. These lessons are especially valuable for areas where human interactions with the land have deep roots and retain importance.

Current limitations of the NP include:

• Ownership and care-taking responsibilities of monuments and places of interest are fragmented, at times unclear, leading to inadequate daily management and maintenance of those sites;
• Religious bodies and common property consortia do not have an official seat in governance mechanisms;
• Narrative presentation of the territory can still be enriched and improved, also with the support of specific research.

Present efforts towards having the area recognized as a mixed property in the UNESCO WH List may offer good opportunities for institutional dialogue around these issues.