Environment I
The Force Of Nature
WORDS: CHLOÉ BRAITHWAITE | ILLUSTRATION: JOSE WALKER
On the island of Pianosa, surrounded by the vividly cerulean waves of the Tyrrhenian Sea, there is an empty prison. The isle is a relatively small piece of land – just a little more than ten square kilometres – and noticeably flat, with a maximum elevation of 29 metres above sea level. In fact, the modern name of Pianosa derives from its ancient Roman title, Planasia, or ‘plain’. The prison was in use back then.
The island was popular once, or at least more well known. The earliest traces of life date back to the Upper Palaeolithic, via stone tools, fragments of ceramics and traces of obsidian that likely came from Sardinia; evidence of early trade connections that allude to a complex society.
The Roman period is when we see the first evidence of Pianosa being used as something of a prison: it was here that the grandson of Emperor Augustus, Agrippa Postumus, lived out his days in exile, sheltered and guarded in his Villa Agrippa. Now simply referred to as the Villa Romana, the ruins include thermal baths and theatre; hardly a prison by modern standards.
Years of people fighting over it – by Napoleon, the Ottomans, the Genoese, the French, the English, even pirates – rendered the land scarred. By the 19th century, Pianosa was described as having been almost totally exploited by farmers from the nearby island of Elba for cereal production and sheep rearing. Ownership passed back and forth between families and states, leaving much of the island neglected until 1856, when it returned to its status of prison, before becoming part of the newly created modern state of Italy in 1861.
“For over 100 years, it functioned as an agricultural penal colony, and in recent years, it was a maximum security prison,” explains Dr Giampiero Sammuri, President of the Tuscan Archipelago National Park – the largest marine park in Europe, and of which Pianosa is now a part – and a biologist. “But in the 80s, the scientific and environmental communities proposed the protection of the islands of the Tuscan Archipelago.”
By the 90s, Pianosa had become the main high-security prison for Mafia bosses, thanks to the lack of phone reception. As a result, a sea perimeter was set up and regularly patrolled; fishing was completely forbidden and visitors rarely allowed.
In 1997, the last prisoner was transferred to the mainland and shortly after, 96 per cent of the island was handed over to become a national park. And so, the island was returned to nature. After 30 years of the enforced perimeter indirectly protecting the fragile marine habitats beneath the waves and little to no visitation allowed upon its shores, Pianosa is an amazing demonstration of nature’s resilience in the face of a zero-access policy. Ever since, the land has been undergoing a renaturation process, slowly recovering, and is predicted to continue to do so, provided conservation continues. It is often looked upon as a perfect case study for observing the natural rewilding of a Mediterranean ecosystem, given its near complete abandonment after hundreds of years of neglect and misuse.
“Today, the number of daily visits by tourists is limited; only four per cent of the island is free-use – essentially just the village – while the remaining part of the island can only be accessed accompanied by a park guide,” Dr Sammuri continues. The national park service has dedicated much time and many resources to conservation, with its main activity being the eradication of invasive species.
“Since 2001, we have managed to eradicate rats introduced to the island, and this has resulted in an exponential increase in the reproductive success of the great shearwater [a species of bird],” he says. “We have also managed to eradicate the island’s feral cats, pheasants and grouse, as well as plant species like ailanthus and pine.”
As a result, biodiversity has increased a lot in recent years. Some 30 bird types are known to nest and winter on the island; the clearing of their natural predators – cats and rats – can only be a boon. “The recovery of nature took a long time,” says Dr Sammuri. “The presence of the prison with a high number of prisoners, but also domestic livestock – often with insufficient services – had a strong impact on the ecosystem.”
Currently, there are no permanent residents on the island, but 20 regular visitors from the nearby Porto Azzurro prison on Elba make the journey to perform maintenance work. An additional 15,000 tourists come each year for guided tours, while visitors to the village are capped at 450 per day, in an example of sustainable tourism.
When the land received national park designation, the seas up to one nautical mile around the island did too. These waters once hosted dolphins, whales, turtles and seals. Sightings continue, though are rare, but diving is allowed in designated areas to watch the schools of barracudas, groupers, rays, parrotfish and critters along the sea floor within Posidonia meadows – themselves an important marker of biodiversity.
In 2001, it was listed among the Specially Protected Areas of Mediterranean Importance by the Barcelona Convention, providing a framework by which the island’s ecosystem is protected and conserved. In 2002, along with the other six isles that comprise the Tuscan Archipelago (Capraia, Elba, Giannutri, Giglio, Gorgona and Montecristo), Pianosa became a Pelagos Sanctuary, the only international sea area dedicated to the protection of marine mammals and their habitats. Then in 2003, it was designated as a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.
Pianosa, once a place of confinement, is now free, with the ability to recuperate and the protection necessary to do so. But its story is far from over. From penal colony to ecological sanctuary, the island’s transformation just goes to show what nature can do when left to her own devices. And although challenges persist, in a world grappling with so much less desirable environmental change, Pianosa’s journey to restoration provides a much-needed chink – or should we say clink – of hope.
