Rapid rise of forests changes the landscape for Italians

Centuries after it was colonised by Vandals and Visigoths, Italy is being invaded again – this time by trees.

A report released yesterday revealed that the widespread abandonment of farmland, particularly in mountainous areas in the south of the country, has led re-afforestation on a massive scale.

Italy now has more forest and woodland than it has had in modern times – 35 per cent of the country is covered in trees. There are now 27 million acres – about 42,000 square miles – of forested land, more than double the area at the end of the Second World War, according to the National Inventory of Forests.

British tourists to Tuscany and Umbria may be accustomed to seeing vast swathes of leafy woodland covering the hills of "Chiantishire" and other popular holiday areas, but the south of Italy is also now increasingly wooded.

It is there that the decline in upland farming has been most pronounced, after small-scale farmers gave up their hard-scrabble properties and moved to towns and cities, or left Italy altogether.

Since 2005, when the last survey was conducted, the area of woodland in the Molise region has risen by 17 per cent, in Sicily by 16 per cent, in Basilicata by 11 per cent and in Calabria by 10 per cent.

"Italians have been abandoning farming for years, allowing trees to spread into areas that are no longer cultivated," Enrico Pompei, of the National Inventory of Forests, told Corriere della Sera newspaper.

The increased tree cover is helping to absorb huge amounts of carbon dioxide, offsetting Italy's industrial emissions. "The amount of CO2 absorbed by forests in Italy is equivalent to half the emissions from the transport sector," said Mr Pompei.

As the tree cover has crept back, so too have big animals, including lynx, deer, wild boar and wolves.

In the past decade, the estimated number of wild boar roaming the hills and woods has increased from 600,000 to one million, according to a recent report by ISPRA, the Italian institute for environmental research.

The population of roe deer, which stood at around 10,000 in 1945, has risen to an estimated half a million.

Lynx have been reintroduced in the mountains of the north east, on the border with Slovenia and Austria, as well as in Piedmont in the north west, while brown bears are thriving in the Trentino region and German-speaking South Tyrol.

While Italy is increasingly leafy, the most forested countries in Europe tend to be in the north – 75 per cent of Sweden and 69 per cent of Findland are covered in trees.

Britain has comparatively little forest cover – just 12 per cent – while less than 10 per cent of Ireland is forested.

Top five most forested countries in Europe (by %)

1 Sweden 75

2 Finland 69

3 Slovenia 60

4 Spain 56

5 Bosnia 53

Top five most forested countries in the world

1 Surinam 91

2 Micronesia 90

3 Seychelles 89

4 Tuvalu 88