Via Feltre, the Linden Trees and Belluno’s Paradox: Fighting for 79 Trees While the Province Disappears Under Forests
While the Regional Administrative Court suspends the felling of the tree rows along Via Feltre in Belluno, official data tell another story: over the course of a century, forest cover in the province has expanded dramatically, swallowing up meadows, alpine farms and pastures. A reflection on the scale of the issue — without taking sides, but with the numbers in hand.
On 30 April 2026, the Veneto Regional Administrative Court (TAR), through an urgent decree issued by its President, Grazia Flaim, suspended the felling of the linden trees along Via Feltre in Belluno. The decision came less than 24 hours after an appeal filed by Italia Nostra and ONDA Veneto, bringing to a halt what the applicants described as a “massacre”. The felling had begun on 14 April and, of the 147 linden trees included in the Urban Redevelopment Project, approximately 68 had already been cut down. Seventy-nine trees remain standing, pending the hearing scheduled for 21 May.
The case has sparked an intense public debate. On one side is the municipal administration, which argues that the trees need to be removed in order to rebuild pavements and underground utilities along a road that has not undergone major redevelopment since the 1960s; on the other are environmental associations, which point to the lack of agronomic assessments, the absence of authorisation from the heritage authority — Via Feltre is protected under Italy’s Cultural Heritage Code, Legislative Decree 42/2004 — and the potential loss of biodiversity, shade and urban environmental quality. In the middle is a city asking itself how much value it places on its urban tree heritage.
Without entering into the legal merits of the case — which are for the Court to decide — it is worth looking at the broader provincial context in which this battle is taking place. Because the numbers tell a story that, paradoxically, seems to be largely absent from the debate.
📊 THE SURPRISING FIGURE
59% of the Province of Belluno is covered by forest.
Of approximately 367,000 hectares of provincial territory, more than 216,000 hectares are forested. The figure was certified in May 2025 by the CaN-Be – Carbon Neutral Belluno project, which recognised the province as a “carbon-neutral” area, capable of absorbing more CO₂ than it emits. Assuming an average density of 500–1,000 trees per hectare in Belluno’s forests, the province’s tree population can be estimated at well over 100 million trees.
A Century of Silent Forest Expansion
Belluno’s current level of forest cover is the result of a phenomenon known in scientific literature as “spontaneous reforestation” or “secondary forest expansion”: the return of woodland to land that was once cultivated, mown or used for grazing. The phenomenon is well documented by Italy’s National Inventory of Forests and Forest Carbon Pools (INFC) and subsequent FAO Global Forest Resources Assessment reports, and the figures are striking.
According to research published in the scientific journal Forest@ by SISEF, the Italian Society of Silviculture and Forest Ecology, Italy’s forest cover has increased from around 12% at the beginning of the 20th century to approximately 40% today. That represents a threefold increase in little more than a century. The FAO Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020 confirms the trend: forest area has increased by 75% in 80 years, including an increase of 25% in the last three decades alone. On average, Italy gains around 800 square metres of new forest every minute.
🌲 BELLUNO AND THE ALPS: VENETO’S FOREST RECORD
The Province of Belluno contains 70% of Veneto’s mountain territory, according to Gruppo Natura Bellunese. Within the Dolomiti Bellunesi National Park alone, 23,000 of its 31,034 hectares are covered by forest — approximately 74%. The park contains 53 different forest types, more than half of the roughly 100 types found throughout the Veneto region.
Belluno’s Regional Forestry Service reports that 76% of the province’s total forest area is subject to forest management planning (2005 data). It is an enormous natural asset that continues to expand, even after Storm Vaia in 2018, which affected approximately 7% of the territory.
What We Have Lost: Meadows, Alpine Farms and Pastures
If forests have expanded, something else has disappeared. And what has been disappearing are the meadows, alpine farms and pastures — precisely the open environments that support some of the richest biodiversity in the Alps: wild orchids, butterflies, birds of prey, alpine galliformes and amphibians living in mountain grazing ponds. This is an ecological heritage of enormous value which, paradoxically, expanding forests are gradually erasing.
Data from Veneto Agricoltura are unequivocal: between 1990 and 2014, Italy lost 15,800 hectares of meadows and pastures every year, much of it taken over by newly established woodland. Belluno is one of the provinces most affected by this phenomenon. In September 2024, the Province of Belluno launched the project “Pascoli delle terre alte: patrimonio da salvaguardare e rigenerare” — “Highland Pastures: A Heritage to Protect and Regenerate” — funded with €370,000 from Fondazione Cariverona and Veneto Agricoltura, with an officially stated objective that used a striking expression: to “reclaim alpine farms from invasive woodland.”
⚠️ THE WORD “INVASIVE”
It was the Province of Belluno itself, in an official statement issued in 2024, that described newly formed woodland as “invasive.” It is a strong word, one that challenges the widespread assumption that “more trees always means better.” In mountain areas, too much forest — particularly unmanaged woodland expanding into areas historically maintained as open landscapes — can mean loss of biodiversity, loss of historic landscapes, loss of alpine farming traditions and problems for hydrogeological management. Research and statements by Professor Tommaso Anfodillo of the University of Padua confirm the underlying trend: forest cover across the Alps has increased since the 1950s and continues to grow because forests are no longer exploited for the subsistence needs of local communities as they once were.
A Reflection of Depopulation
“Reforestation through abandonment” is also the negative image of another major phenomenon affecting Belluno: mountain depopulation. The province lost almost 10,000 inhabitants between 2008 and 2018, falling below the psychologically significant threshold of 200,000 residents in 2020. Behind every hectare of new forest there is often a cowshed that has closed, a hay barn that has collapsed, a path that is no longer maintained, or a family that has moved away towards the plains.
When we speak of “protecting our tree heritage”, therefore, we need to be clear about what we mean. Belluno is not short of trees. On the contrary, it has roughly three times the forest cover it had a century ago. If anything, the real problem is the opposite: the disappearance of the people who once maintained, mowed and inhabited this landscape.
The Linden Tree Debate: A Question of Proportion
It is within this context that the battle over the 79 linden trees of Via Feltre should be considered. And it is a legitimate battle, of course: the road’s cultural heritage protection, the alleged absence of agronomic assessments, the lack of consultation with the heritage authority, urban environmental quality, summer shade and the trees’ contribution to reducing airborne particulate matter are all genuine issues deserving attention and a detailed response from the municipal administration.
However, framing the Via Feltre case primarily as an issue of “nesting” or of “protecting biodiversity across the province” appears disproportionate when compared with the ecological reality of the area. The birds that — according to some comments on social media — might struggle to find nesting sites because of the removal of these urban linden trees have, only a few kilometres away, more than 216,000 hectares of continuous and expanding forest. This does not mean diminishing the importance of urban greenery, but rather placing it within the correct scale.
🦉 A QUESTION OF SCALE
Imagine turning the entire tree population of the Province of Belluno into a stadium with 100,000 seats. The 79 linden trees of Via Feltre would represent less than one tenth of a single seat. Naturally, this does not mean that Via Feltre does not deserve attention: urban trees perform ecosystem functions that mountain forests cannot replace, including urban cooling, particulate reduction, pedestrian shade and historical landscape value.
But the public debate should make a clear distinction between protecting urban greenery — a legitimate and necessary objective — and an apocalyptic narrative about biodiversity loss in an area that, statistically, is among the most heavily forested territories in Europe.
The Question That Remains
The Via Feltre controversy raises a broader question that deserves collective reflection rather than polemics: why is it so difficult to mobilise people in the Province of Belluno to tackle the invasive woodland swallowing up alpine farms and pastures, while 79 urban linden trees can trigger an appeal to the Regional Administrative Court within 24 hours?
Perhaps it is because protecting the historic agro-silvo-pastoral landscape — the very landscape that UNESCO recognised as part of the heritage of the Dolomites — requires real, physical effort. It requires chainsaws, brush cutters, farmers, alpine herders, public funding and hard manual work. Filing an appeal with an administrative court, by comparison, is infinitely easier in practical terms — and far more visible in the media.
This is not intended as criticism of environmental associations. They fulfil their role and perform an important function of democratic oversight. Rather, it is an invitation to the entire community — and to the media — to recover a sense of proportion and broaden the perspective. Belluno’s real environmental emergency is not confined to Via Feltre. It can be found in the abandoned alpine farms of Cansiglio, in the meadows of Val Canzoi being overtaken by hazel, in the pastures above Forno di Zoldo being swallowed by green alder, and along trails disappearing beneath newly established woodland that is erasing centuries of Alpine rural history.
✅ THE NUMBERS AT A GLANCE
- 59% of the Province of Belluno is covered by forest (CaN-Be project, 2025)
- 216,000+ hectares of forest across the province
- +75% increase in Italy’s forest area over the last 80 years (FAO/FRA 2020)
- +28% between 1985 and 2015 in Italy (ISPRA)
- From 12% to around 40% national forest cover in little more than a century (SISEF)
- 15,800 hectares per year of meadows and pastures lost in Italy between 1990 and 2014 (Veneto Agricoltura)
- 23,000 forested hectares out of 31,034 in the Dolomiti Bellunesi National Park (74%)
- 147 linden trees originally involved in Via Feltre, 79 of which remain standing
Conclusion: Let the Court Decide, but the Question Remains
On 21 May, the Veneto Regional Administrative Court is due to rule on the merits of the case. Whatever the outcome, the Via Feltre controversy leaves Belluno with an uncomfortable question: are we really the “greenest city in Italy”, defending every single tree, or are we a province slowly disappearing beneath the forest while becoming emotionally consumed by rows of ornamental trees?
The answer probably lies in learning to hold both ideas together: respecting and protecting urban greenery — through serious agronomic assessments, proper authorisations and genuine dialogue with residents — while also recognising that Belluno’s true landscape heritage, made up of flower-filled meadows, working alpine farms, open pastures and biodiversity, needs not simply fewer or more trees, but more people willing to care for the land.
Perhaps, once the fate of the Via Feltre linden trees has been decided, some of the same civic energy could be directed towards the thousands of hectares of meadow that silently disappear each year beneath hazel, alder and beech. That is where an appeal really is needed — not to the courts, but to common sense.
Sources: Decree of the Veneto Regional Administrative Court of 30 April 2026 (President Grazia Flaim) • Statements by Italia Nostra, Belluno Section, and ONDA Veneto • Newsinquota.it • Bellunopress • Il Dolomiti • Corriere delle Alpi • Telebelluno • CaN-Be (Carbon Neutral Belluno) Project, Province of Belluno, May 2025 • FAO Global Forest Resources Assessment 2020 • ISPRA Environmental Data Yearbook • Marchetti M., Motta R., Pettenella D., Sallustio L., Vacchiano G. (2018), Forest@ 15: 41–50 (SISEF) • Italian National Forest Inventory (INFC) 2015 • Veneto Agricoltura, Pascoli delle terre alte project, 2024 • Dolomiti Bellunesi National Park, Forest Management Plan • University of Padua, statements by Prof. Tommaso Anfodillo (TESAF Department) • Gruppo Natura Bellunese.
Cover photo: The forests surrounding an old house near Villa di Villa (BL) — Photo RE/MAX Casamia Real Estate Agency