"It was the time of great migrations, and in the plain overflown by goshawks and kites, caravans passed one after another: camels, men, livestock, children, women, old men and old women. All with the anxiety and seriousness of migrating animals, the painful necessity of moving on while all around them motionless things slipped away like fugitives." (Eugenio Turri, Diario di un geografo)
Today, humans are the greatest threat to the animal and plant diversity they themselves have helped create over millennia.
Eugenio Turri’s gaze often lingers on traditional extensive practices of livestock breeding, grazing, and transhumance, which for centuries have supported biodiversity, sustainable soil management, and an intimate relationship between humans and animals.
The FAO’s 2019 Global Report on the State of Biodiversity for Food and Agriculture denounced, for the first time, the degradation of our food systems: of the 7,745 local livestock breeds recorded worldwide, over 25% are at risk of extinction, and nearly one-third of fish stocks are overexploited. Among the key drivers of biodiversity loss in the Mediterranean are the standardization and intensification of farming and breeding practices.
Alongside the disappearance of livestock breeds—halved in Italy over the last century—we are witnessing a decline in “associated” biodiversity: the vast array of plants, animals, and microorganisms (insects, bats, birds, marine plants, earthworms, fungi, bacteria, etc.) that keep soil fertile, pollinate plants, purify water and air, and support healthy fisheries and agroforestry systems.
Humans themselves are the greatest threat to what they once helped create: a diversity built over thousands of years, which, once lost, will be extremely difficult to recover.
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