Wildlife conservation in restored mines

Always sensitive to environmental issues, Minerali has been committed over the years to restoring the areas in which it has operated by recreating spaces to host rare animal species. To this end, a series of activities have been implemented over the years, historically carried out with the help of professional collaborators, aimed at repopulating and then monitoring wildlife in order to preserve it-an example of how responsible industrial activity can be environmentally friendly.

Since 1996 numerous studies have been carried out particularly on bird species that have repopulated the restored areas, through monitoring methods aimed at preserving their conservation.

These include scientific inbreeding, a technique used to capture birds harmlessly using nets that do not harm them. The goal is to mark birds with tiny aluminum rings to monitor their movements, sex, age, molt and health status. This method is very useful for collecting important information on the conservation of bird species, especially for those of modest size, which cannot be equipped with transmitters (radio/tracking). Scientific ringing is also used to perform numerical censuses over time to compare results. The technique is used at the former “Sella” mine in Curino, where birds are captured to study their presence and behavior in these newly reconstructed environments.
Scientific ringing has also become an important technique for environmental education, allowing visitors to observe birds up close. The “Sella Quarry” station in Curino is among the most important Italian ringing stations and participates in the national MonITring project. So far, 77 bird species have been ringed in Curino, mainly small sylvan birds, which have returned spontaneously to colonize their new environments.

The project:

MonITRing is a project to monitor avifauna, that is, the birds that inhabit a given area, conducted through the technique of bird capture and ringing. Birds are captured using non-harmful methods, such as bird nets, and the birds are then ringed with identification rings in order to be able to identify them in the future and study their behavior, biology, ecology and migration.
Thus, the MonITRing project aims to collect scientific information on avifauna by monitoring changes in bird populations and communities in a given area over time.

Thanks to:
Alice Bordignon, doctor of agronomy, restoration coordinator of the Industrial Minerals Group.
Lucio Bordignon, ornithologist.

Photographs by Franco Lorenzini