Or: the long decline of civic reformism in the mountains
A century ago Italy’s liberal bourgeoisie founded Pro Montibus, invented national parks, and reformed the Forestry Corps. Today people turn to the courts — and hug trees — to stop the felling of a hundred lime trees in Belluno. Something, in the meantime, has been lost.
The Federazione Nazionale Italiana Pro Montibus was exactly that: an association founded in Turin in 1898 at the instigation of the Italian Alpine Club, with the goal of reforesting Italy’s mountains, improving alpine pastures, and protecting flora. Nothing revolutionary, on the face of it. But the list of its board members — Prince Scipione Borghese, Minister Luigi Rava, Professor Emanuele Paternò — says a great deal about how capable that civic culture was of blending elegance and substance. In 1904 its headquarters moved to Rome. A stone’s throw from Montecitorio, one might say: close enough to be heard.
The reformism that built things
The results speak for themselves. In 1909 the Emilian section organised a forestry conference in Bologna that laid the groundwork for the reorganisation of the State Forestry Corps, crystallised the following year in the Luzzatti law. In 1916, within the same association, the Commission for National Parks was born, which would lead, in January 1923, to the decree establishing the Abruzzo National Park — the first in Italy — after years of quiet work to protect the chamois and the Marsican brown bear from extinction. These were people who cared about trees. But they didn’t hug them: they built institutions around them.
«To promote reforestation and ensure compliance with the laws on forest management. To sponsor the establishment of alpine gardens and arboretums, and to exercise special protection over mountain plants and flora.»
Art. 1, Pro Montibus Statute, 1898
Pro Montibus was later absorbed by the Fascist Forestry Militia in 1927 — the typical fate of those unfortunate enough to be useful under a regime that preferred to absorb rather than to thank. But the work was done. The forests had a law. The parks had a decree. The ideas had taken the shape of the State.
Belluno, the lime trees, and the Administrative Court
Let’s skip forward a century. We are in Belluno, May 2026. The municipality is planning to redevelop Via Feltre: three point seven million euros, new pavements, raised pedestrian crossings, a street that — in the words of Mayor Oscar De Pellegrin — has been «stuck in 1965». A long-awaited project, partly funded by a private citizen, designed with technical assessments that fill entire folders. All in order, all transparent.
Even the lime trees noticed. Or rather: the petitioners at the Regional Administrative Court (TAR) noticed. On 30 April, Italia Nostra and Onda Veneto obtained an emergency stay from the Regional Administrative Court: a halt to the felling of the 79 lime trees still standing, after the municipality had already removed 69 of the 147 envisaged by the project. The TAR’s order speaks of «landscape features of primary importance». As a legal argument, that holds up fine. The problem lies elsewhere.
On 26 May the TAR rejected the appeal on its merits, recognising the correctness of the municipality’s administrative process and the soundness of its technical assessments. Work can resume. But the debate that preceded this decision deserves some reflection.
The heir’s paradox
Italia Nostra is, by definition, the spiritual heir of that season of noble civic association. Founded in 1955, with a pedigree that counts Umberto Zanotti Bianco and Giorgio Bassani among its founders, it has a serious history. No one can deny that. And no one wants to deny — let’s be clear — that protecting urban greenery is a legitimate cause, that seventy-year-old lime trees have value, that preventive dialogue between administrations and associations is a healthy practice.
The point lies elsewhere, and it is one of method, not of substance. When Pro Montibus wanted to protect the alpine forests, it built the Forestry Corps. When it wanted to preserve the wildlife of Abruzzo, it established a national park. It acted in the direction of structure, of shared rules, of collective project. The Administrative Court, by its very nature, is instead a tool of veto: it blocks, suspends, challenges. It is the right tool when there is an abuse of power. It is a questionable tool when it becomes the first reflex in the face of any decision one simply dislikes.
Mayor De Pellegrin, in our view, was wrong on only one point: not having sought — or found — a preventive dialogue that might have avoided a month of paralysed works. But to leap from there to turning a hundred lime trees on an urban street into the Białowieża Forest is quite a stretch. And a little comical, seen with dry eyes.
A question of mindset
There is something melancholy (and deeply sad) in the contrast between those gentlemen of Montecitorio with their statutes and this season in which the height of civic activism seems to consist of challenging an administrative act — or, in the more picturesque versions of the phenomenon, of physically chaining oneself to a lime tree trunk in front of the municipal technicians, with the solemnity of someone who imagines themselves at Standing Rock and instead finds themselves on the urban stretch of a Veneto provincial road.
The members of the anti-felling committees who animated the weeks of Via Feltre in Belluno belong to this second school: pitiable not for the cause, which is debatable but not ignoble, but for the method — hugging the tree as a political gesture, the selfie at the construction site as an act of civil resistance.
🏛️ THE MISSING METHOD
Pro Montibus would not have gone to the Administrative Court. It would not have chained itself to the trees. It would have convened a conference, written a technical memorandum, proposed a design variant, found a member of parliament willing to raise a question in committee. It would have negotiated with the municipality, not against the municipality. It would have brought its knowledge as a contribution, not as a weapon — still less as a chain.
Via Feltre will get its pavements. The lime trees will be replanted — or so the project says. Work resumes. But the next time someone turns up their nose at a public project in this province, it might be worth asking: are we building something, or merely braking something?
Those liberal bourgeois of a century ago, with their statutes on letterhead and their parliamentary commissions, understood the difference. And they never hugged a lime tree — except to count its rings, and remember how long it takes to build something of value.
Al Mazaròl
This article refers to the redevelopment works on Via Feltre in Belluno (2026) and to the history of the Federazione Nazionale Italiana Pro Montibus (1898–1927). The Veneto Regional Administrative Court rejected the precautionary request on 26 May 2026, confirming the regularity of the municipal project.