Val Grande

Val Grande National Park was created in 1992 in Piedmont, in the province of Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, in north-western Italy and very close to Lago Maggiore and the Swiss border. It is a relatively small park, of some 146 km², but it presents itself as the largest wilderness area in Italy, and the reason is not that it has never been touched but exactly the opposite.

These valleys were intensively used for centuries: mountain grazing with its alpe pastures and huts, systematic felling to supply timber to the towns of the plain, charcoal burning, hay cutting on impossible slopes. During the Second World War they were also a refuge for partisans and the scene of brutal reprisals in 1944. Then came depopulation: people left and the use of the land ceased abruptly, and the forest recolonised pastures, terraces and paths until the human imprint was almost entirely erased.

The result is a territory without roads, without settlements and with a difficult network of paths, where the old cobbled tracks and the ruins of the huts appear already swallowed by the vegetation. That condition of recovered rather than conserved nature is what defines the park and makes it a case study in spontaneous rewilding in Europe. The wildlife is that of the mid-altitude Alps, with chamois, roe deer, wild boar, golden eagle and a forest community expanding as the woodland matures.