The Diversity of Sacred Lands in Europe - IUCN

These constitute the nodes of the Natura2000
European Ecological Network.
Moreover, sometimes shrines
and religious buildings are associated
with the presence of protected areas.
The link between protected areas and
therapeutic sanctuaries is probably
coincidental. No historical references
connect their location to particular natural
elements (Sensi, personal communication,
2010), although sometimes
they are related to the cult of spring
water (Sensi, 1984) and they are actually
built along watercourses or in particularly
scenic natural settings. And it
is also argued (Antinori, 2009) that
some Christian sacred places traces
out older pagan temples and sacred
sites, often connected to the natural
characters of landscape (presence of
spring water and mountains). What remains
certain is that the shrines and religious
buildings are often associated
with ‘outstanding landscapes’. Anyway
the spontaneous manifestations of the
devotion of locals and their familiarity
with the place make these outstanding
landscapes part of their everyday life.
Threats for the conservation
of landscape connections and
visions for future management
Despite the presence of a significant
number of protected areas, nonetheless,
the Plestian landscape remains
open to threats and transformations.
The complexity of the relationships between
the different parts of the region,
whether they are of natural or cultural/
spiritual relevance adds to the problem.
The mere presence of protected
areas does not always guarantee a
sustainable integrated management of
the entire landscape, nor does it halt
the loss of biodiversity. Sometime functional
choices imposed on by the national
government, responding to the
current economic global system’s
needs, actually represent threats for
biodiversity conservation, despite the
protection of specific sites.
A first threat to the conservation of local
ecosystems comes from methodologies
of management that are only apparently
coherent with the aims of biodiversity
conservation, but actually far
from a holistic, integrated and systemic
vision that takes into account delicate
ecological balances and dynamics
(Pedrotti, 1996) together with their
relations with human activities. This is
especially true as regards the marsh,
where part of the wetland was drained
between 1963-1992, because of the
agricultural reconversion, the extraction
of peat, and interventions aimed at
the naturalistic and touristic ‘revitalisation’
of the protected area, such as the
closure of the main inghiottitoio (see
above) to stabilise the water level (Pedrotti,
1996; Pedrotti personal communication,
2010). The second threat
comes from modern agricultural and
zoo-technical practices, e.g. the increasing
use of fertilisers, the reduction
of linear elements of ecological
connectivity, such as hedges and rows
of trees, in addition to the spread of urbanised
areas at the valley bottoms.
Also for these reasons, the protected
areas of the Plains do not yet represent
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