Campo dei Fiori Park, is the place where people from Varese (near Milan) usually go on holiday. It’s one of the most popular destination among the locals, due to the proximity to the city and the beauty of its landscape. Its geographical location together with its geological features favored the growth of vegetation, chestnut and beach woods, rocky flora and peaty-paludous habitats with a large variety of animals. In fact, the park’s forests are home to dozens of species: deer, roe deer, red foxes, beech martens, dormice, and skunks.

There is no shortage of birds of prey, such as the honey buzzard, sparrowhawk, and peregrine falcon. In the last five years, however, the forests of the Campo dei Fiori massif have been affected by a succession of disruptive events of high severity: several fires, the storm “Alex” in 2020, heavy rains and consequent hydrogeological instability that have compromised large forest areas. In some locations, more than 90% of the plants have been knocked down, i.e., grounded or broken by the storm.

This left the forest unable to provide its benefits, including protecting the residential areas located at the foot of the massif. The project aims to restore damaged forest and to improve some valuable habitats vital for biodiversity.

This project is co-funded by the Lombardy Region’s Biodiversity and Climate Call (BioClima) and supported by Fondazione Cariplo. Bioclima is an initiative created within the framework of the Lombardy Plan and the LIFE GESTIRE 2020 project that aims to create public-private financing models to catalyze investment in biodiversity conservation and climate change adaptation projects in Lombardy’s forests and protected areas.