Where the woods are still forest

Text and images by Alessandro Franza

In Italian, we use bosco and foresta almost as synonyms, but they do not mean quite the same thing. A bosco is a familiar place: it has trails and tree stumps, and bears the traces of logging, grazing and charcoal making. For centuries, people have used it, cared for it and, at least to some extent, shaped it.

A foresta is different: an almost chaotic, tangled environment where nature itself takes the lead, following its own long timescales and rules, without anyone directing its course. Fairy tales take place in the woods; adventures unfold in forests…

In Europe, where almost every patch of green bears the mark of human activity, true forests are extremely rare. Ancient beech forests are among the few that remain. For this reason, they have been recognised by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site and brought together as a serial property: separate areas located in different countries but sharing the same characteristics.

Today, 93 beech forests make up the “Ancient and Primeval Beech Forests of the Carpathians and Other Regions of Europe” World Heritage Site. Spread across 18 countries, from the Carpathians to the Apennines and from the Baltic to the Balkans, they tell a story spanning around ten thousand years: the story of the beech tree, which emerged from its refuges after the last Ice Age and slowly recolonised the continent.

Thirteen of these forests are in Italy, and five are located in the Abruzzo, Lazio and Molise National Park. As a tutor on a dedicated Erasmus+ project, I have had the opportunity to visit some of them with young people who live here in the Abruzzo National Park.

Last year, we travelled to Jasmund in Germany, where beech trees grow at sea level on chalk cliffs overlooking the Baltic. This year, we went to Bulgaria, to Central Balkan National Park. These places may be far apart, yet they are connected: the same light filtering down from above, the same soft ground underfoot, the same fallen trunks left where they lie.

A ten-thousand-year story that is still unfolding

These sites were not recognised for the beauty of a single woodland, nor for having the largest or oldest tree, but for the extraordinarily long story they represent.

During the Ice Ages, beech survived in just a few refuge areas around the Alps, the Carpathians, the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees. When the climate changed around 11,000 years ago, it began spreading from these refuges and gradually reclaimed much of the continent.

According to UNESCO, this process has never stopped: beech continues to expand northwards and westwards. This is why the World Heritage recognition is based on a criterion that acknowledges ongoing ecological and biological processes.

It is also why the areas were selected to represent the full diversity of this extraordinary journey: from the coast to the tree line, across different geological formations and climates, and in both pure and mixed beech forests.

This explains why the site brings together places that are so far apart. Established in 2007 with areas in Slovakia and Ukraine, it expanded over time: to Germany in 2011, to ten additional countries, including Italy, in 2017, and again in 2021. Today, it encompasses around 100,000 hectares of forest, surrounded by almost 300,000 hectares of buffer zones.

Managing by not managing

There is a small paradox here. The site has a management plan, but at the heart of that plan is the decision not to intervene. The rule for all areas is non-intervention: no logging, no removal of deadwood, no measures to “tidy up” the forest.

Most of the 93 areas are protected as strict forest reserves, wilderness areas, core zones of biosphere reserves or national parks. In some cases, protection is instead ensured through forest management plans that prohibit logging in old-growth forests.

Simply leaving a patch of forest undisturbed is not enough: it also needs to be large enough to function as an ecosystem. This is why a minimum threshold of 50 hectares has been established, while the possibility of expanding the four smaller areas is being considered, always without intervention.

Each area is surrounded by buffer zones, often consisting of other parks and reserves, which protect it from what happens beyond its boundaries. The main threats, in fact, come from outside: logging in nearby areas, which can alter the forest’s microclimate, and landscape fragmentation, which reduces forests to isolated islands.

Climate change is another factor and may alter the composition of species. Beech has already demonstrated its ability to adapt to very different conditions, and observing how it responds to future changes is part of the value of these places.

Each area remains under the responsibility of its own country, but the 18 nations involved work together through a joint management committee, a shared declaration of intent and a coordinator. Their common objectives include monitoring, research, education and visitor management. Protecting these places does not mean closing them off entirely, but learning how to experience them without leaving a trace.

An Italian privilege

In Italy, we have the privilege of safeguarding some of these forests. They are often small pockets of green that have survived because they are difficult to reach or have long been protected, making them even more valuable.

And there is one fact worth reflecting on: Italy is among the countries with the highest number of UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the world, yet almost all of them are the result of human activity—historic cities, monuments and works of art.

Its natural World Heritage Sites can be counted on the fingers of one hand: the Aeolian Islands, the Dolomites, Mount Etna, Monte San Giorgio and, of course, these beech forests.

This is not a hierarchy of value, but it says something about the way we look at the world. We are accustomed to recognising wonder in what we have built, but much less so in what we have managed to leave undisturbed.

Taking it slow

Perhaps this is also why we move through nature too quickly. An old-growth forest is not something you “visit” like a museum: there is no prescribed route and no masterpiece you have to photograph. It asks you to slow down. To walk without a specific destination, to stop and listen, to accept that sometimes nothing spectacular happens.

Then, if you stay long enough, something does happen: the sound of the wind changing from one side of the mountain to the other, a woodpecker heard before it is seen, the scent of earth and leaves after the rain, moss covering a fallen trunk like a blanket. The beauty of a forest rarely demands attention. Instead, it gradually reveals its wonders to those who take the time to notice them.

It also asks us to leave a few preconceptions behind. The idea that a forest is “messy” because its floor is covered with branches, that a rotting trunk “should be removed”, that a place needs to be tidy and useful in order to have value. A dead tree is not waste; it is the beginning of another story.

An old-growth forest is not simply a very old woodland. It is a place where natural cycles unfold in full: trees are born, grow, age and die, decompose and give rise to new life. A fallen beech becomes food and shelter. It takes decades to decompose, and over that long period biodiversity is able to express itself in its fullest form.

None of this requires travelling far. The most famous forests are extraordinary, but they are not the only ones worth paying attention to. The woodland behind our homes, the urban park we cross every day: there is something to learn there too, if we look at it in the right way. We simply need to return in different seasons, look up, bend down to observe things closely, take away only what we need to remember the experience—a photograph, a drawing, a feeling—and leave everything else as it is.

Spending time respectfully in the natural places close to us is also the best way to prepare for those that are rarer. We learn how to be in nature, rather than simply pass through it.

The young people we accompanied live in a national park and often grow up surrounded by all of this without fully appreciating its value. Taking them to other forests across Europe was, above all, a way to show them that what is an everyday landscape for some can be rare and precious to others.

The next time we enter a forest, whether near or far, famous or unknown, let us go slowly, with respect and without rushing to arrive somewhere. Let us stop where the light grows dim and the sound of our footsteps fades into the leaves. Let us place a hand on a trunk and think about how many springs it has seen.

Let us listen to its silence, which is never truly silent. It is the voice of an entire forest that, for ten thousand years, has continued to do what it does best: live.

These trees were here long before us and will remain here long after us. Getting to know them is the first step towards protecting them, and getting to know them takes time.

There is nothing to conquer. We simply need to stay long enough to realise that the wonder was there all along.

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