Common Property Forest Management in Practice

What a crazy day! We started off visiting a medieval palace where Magnifica Comunita di Fiemme (MCF), a communally managed forest, has been managed for centuries. We learned a lot about their structure, and how their system manages desires from so many people, while still preserving the forest for the following generations. We were given a presentation that explained how they have managed to sustain themselves over hundreds of years and how they balance power to make it as much of a democracy as possible. Just as an example, there is a president, who presides over the 11 person council of elected officials, who cannot serve for more than two elected terms. We then took a tour of the palace, and saw some really fascinating art from many renowned artists, but also a lot of (incredibly talented) local artists.

After a few hours of rest and exploring the city of Cavalese, we were given a tour of the saw mill where the timber from the MCF was de-barked (I’m sure there is a better word for that), organized, and packaged. It was really interesting to actually see it happening (it was a working facility during our tour) and hear what an employee had to say about it, because I have never really considered how the forest-to-usable wood process works. He also had some stories, such as the maker of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra instruments actually chose that mill to purchase the wood for the instruments. It was also a lot bigger operation then I thought it was going to be, with so many logs, I don’t know how they kept track of them all!

My article, "Common property forest management in northern Italy: a historical and socio-economic profile," definitely relates to what we saw today because it talked about communal forest management. What it means, what it does, and why it is such a good system if implemented correctly. In the article, he talked about many different things, but some of the ones I found most interesting were that the voting owners of the property (either born there or lived there for over 20 years) would vote for officials to represent their desires for the land. In the example we heard about today, over 6,000 people can vote for the officials that best represent their preferences. Also, the idea of Non-Timber Forest Products (ski passes, grazing/harvesting rights, etc.), and that those account for about 2/3’s of the total revenue from the forest. This must vary greatly from forest to forest, because the presenter today said NTFP's accounted for less than 10% of their total revenue. Lastly, each owner gets a share of the profit from the land. This is an interesting way to give them a vested interest in how the land is used, and an incentive to preserve the land for future years (because what’s a better motivator than money J).

The idea of a group of residents sharing the rewards of a nearby plot of land is new and very interesting to me because even though it has been around for centuries, I have never seen it practiced in the U.S., and it was really interesting to see how it works!