Salviamo l’Orso wants to congratulate with our friends from Stazione Ornitologica Abruzzese ONLUS, which have obtained the environmental restoration of the military polygon in Monte Stabiata, located in the territory of Gran Sasso and Monti della Laga National Park, after years of disinterest of the public bodies.
Press release of the 8th of August 2022
The impressive furrows of the slopes opened by military vehicles on the protected grasslands of the Gran Sasso National Park in the military polygon of Monte Stabiata, object of a detailed exposition of the Stazione Ornitologica Abruzzese, will have to be restored by the Alpine troops in agreement with the park authority.
This was decided by the Environmental Impact Assessment Committee of the Abruzzo Region in the session of the 2nd of August, which also allowed to exercises exclusively by foot, for a few dozen soldiers and “in white”, that is, without detonating ammunition.
The incredible case had been raised by a detailed letter from the Stazione Ornitologica, which had reminded the public bodies to make the community and the State respect precise provisions of the law. Following the report, the Ministry of Ecological Transition also intervened, asking the public bodies for acknowledgment about the presence of environmental damage.
The images we collected three months ago make us understand the level of damage suffered by the Park’s vegetation. Given the over ten-year use of the site, a capillary work will be required. These images, including those collected in December 2019 after a large exercise, reveal the pervasiveness of the impact on the turf and will certainly be useful to fully understand the extent of the problem and the technical solutions to be implemented.
The military will also have to further clean up the area of waste, which is the subject of another SOA report and another letter from the Ministry.
Augusto De Sanctis, councilor of the Stazione Ornitologica Abruzzese, declares: “Finally the military are recalled to their responsibilities, with a guilty delay of the various bodies, starting with the VIA Committee which in previous decisions had evidently not noticed the real condition of the site, despite having been invested of the matter for years. What about the Carabinieri Forestali of the Park, who also knew the situation well, as evidenced by a note dated 31 May 2017 – five years ago – signed by the then Commander Carlo Console? One inhabitant had underlined the problem of the military exercises in a protected area, activities that at that time also lacked the park clearance and the impact assessment required by law, but the answer was absolutely inadequate. It is disconcerting that an association is bringing out the problems, demanding and now obtaining the implementation of European laws. We carried out an inspection and documented all the unequivocal problems that persist in a protected area. Obviously, we will closely follow the concrete implementation of the prescriptions imposed by the Committee and we will not stop at this because we must follow another very important issue about the contamination of the area. The remediation process, linked to exceeding the legal parameters for various heavy metals, has been going on since 2014 and has not yet been completed. There were errors and unacceptable delays; we are giving our technical contribution to ask the authorities to apply the rules rigorously “.