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Isola di Asinara The Ministry of Environment’s former Director General of Italy’s protected area programs, Dr. Aldo Cosentino, has aptly observed that coastal and marine protected areas in the United States and Italy are fundamentally different in that Italy’s coastline has been used by humans for many thousands of years and heavily developed for many hundreds of years. Most of the national marine sanctuaries in the United States typically protect areas of relative wilderness or marine waters offshore of public owned parks or protected seashores. Or they protect no coastline at all and only offshore ocean areas.
However, Dr. Cosentino recognized that there is one marine protected area in Italy that today encompasses wilderness – the Island of Asinara. In 1997, the government of Italy completed procedures to close a prison on Asinara and turn the island and its many buildings over to the national park system. In 2002, the waters offshore of the national park were zoned and the area was instituted as a marine protected area, encompassing 49 miles of coastline around the island and 41 square miles of its coastal waters.
The cultural history of the island is also quite diverse. While known most recently as a maximum security prison, the island also was used to house terrorists during the 1970s and as a quarantine facility for people with various diseases such as small pox around the turn of the century. In World War I it was used as a military concentration camp. In the 1800s, Sardinian pastoralists and Ligurian fishermen set up habitations on the island, and there are Roman and Greek ruins on the island that date back several thousand years. Recently, Roman amphorae found in a bay near the former quarantine facility contain what is thought to be the remains of dried fish, sardines, caught nearby and readied for transport.
The park and MPA share some administrative and enforcement staff, as well as advisory councils with the local communities, but have different core staff focusing on the different terrestrial and marine management duties. Given the physical facilities and spectacular natural resources, whether with one team or with two, the marine protected area and national park have a tremendous opportunity to protect a rare piece of wilderness in Italy.
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