Abruzzo region allocates €10 million to reduce wildlife mortality and restore natural ecosystems: FESR funds awarded to Parks and Municipalities.

The funding follows the approval of the ranking of eligible projects and provides for the following allocation:

• €8.55 million assigned to the five Abruzzo parks under the ERDF action line ‘Biodiversity protection and improvement of natural ecosystems, strengthening of ecological connectivity’
• €1.76 million distributed among eleven municipalities located within Natura 2000 areas under the action line ‘Biodiversity protection and improvement of natural ecosystems within Natura 2000 Sites’.

The actions

The funded interventions will focus on crucial measures to reduce wildlife mortality, with particular attention to the bear, to which a significant share of initiatives is dedicated. Among the main actions planned:

♦ Construction of safe road crossings.
♦ Securing artificial reservoirs and tanks.
♦ Improving the management of organic waste in urban areas.
♦ Ecosystem restoration and renaturalization interventions.

 

The role of Rewilding Apennines

As Rewilding Apennines, we welcome the value of these investments: these are measures we have been implementing on a daily basis for years, thanks to the support of Rewilding Europe and our donors. They are interventions we know well and whose effectiveness we can attest to. Several of the beneficiary municipalities, in fact, are located within the ecological corridors where we have long been active—areas in which we have built strong collaborations and developed shared projects with local institutions, protected areas, and civil society groups.

In recent years, also through the funds of the LIFE Bear Smart Corridors project, which we coordinate together with Rewilding Europe, we have:

• provided municipalities with more than 100 bear-proof waste containers;

• distributed over 400 electric fences and more than a hundred bear-proof chicken coops and reinforced doors;

• carried out road-safety interventions, from amphibian underpasses to deterrents for large wildlife;

• implemented restoration actions, the core of our rewilding work.

Many of our results are collected here.

Focus: securing water reservoirs

Among the most urgent activities directly linked to this funding, we want to draw attention to artificial reservoirs. These structures are extremely dangerous—often abandoned—and every year they cause the death of hundreds of animals, from amphibians to bears.

Rewilding Apennines and Salviamo l’Orso – an association dedicated to conserving the Marsican brown bear and protecting its habitat, with whom we have been working closely for years – have already secured 26 dangerous reservoirs, intervening even in remote areas. Together, we had also compiled a list identifying those where safety measures remain absolutely urgent.

One case, however, weighs on us with deep bitterness: the artificial snowmaking reservoir on Monte Rotondo, in the Municipality of Scanno. Since 2021—again together with Salviamo l’Orso—we had reported its danger and installed escape ramps as an initial emergency measure. In 2023 we went further, offering the Municipality technical and financial support, which was later supplemented by funds from the Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise National Park and the LIFE Bear Smart Corridors project.

Despite this, bureaucratic delays and—let us be clear—the Municipality’s lack of proper care prevented the interventions from being carried out. The result was the tragic and avoidable death of two Marsican brown bear cubs in May 2025. A preventable tragedy.

In this statement, Salviamo l’Orso clearly reconstructed all the responsibilities and the failed attempts to prevent an unacceptable loss.

A look to the future

This is why we particularly welcome the news that Scanno is among the municipalities awarded ERDF funds, and will finally be able to secure the Monte Rotondo reservoir. With funding of nearly €80,000, it will be possible to build—hopefully in a short timeframe—a permanent fence around the entire perimeter of the basin.

Today, it is time to look ahead. This funding represents a concrete opportunity to make the central Apennines a safer place for wildlife and for the communities that live there.

Now is the time to act.

To learn more:

Census, inspection, and reporting of a series of dangerous reservoirs for wildlife, domestic animals, and humans

Abruzzo Region official statement

Two bear cubs found dead in the artificial snowmaking basin of the Carapale chairlift in Scanno