Italy's Forests Just Surpassed A Third Of The Country.
Italy has quietly become one of the most forested nations in Europe, with woodland now covering more than 11 million hectares, more than one third of the entire national territory, and more than double the forest area that existed a century ago when intensive wartime and industrial deforestation had stripped much of the country bare. The milestone has crossed a threshold that few would have predicted even a generation ago: since 2020, forest cover in Italy has exceeded the area of actively used agricultural land, a reversal of a relationship that had defined the country's landscape for thousands of years and had never previously been recorded in either direction. Italy now ranks sixth in Europe for total forested area, covering approximately 5 percent of the continent's entire woodland, above the European average of around 33 percent of land area covered by forest. The expansion has been happening at a rate of roughly 100,000 hectares of new forest per year, driven primarily by the abandonment of marginal agricultural land in mountain regions, the natural conversion of former pastures and meadows into woodland, and the gradual rewilding of hillsides that were actively farmed for centuries and are no longer economically viable to cultivate.
The transformation is both ecological and cultural. In 1954, in the years immediately following World War II, Italy's forests covered only 5.7 million hectares. By 1985 that had grown to nearly 9 million. Today's figure of more than 11 million represents a near doubling over 70 years, with the newest forests largely concentrated in the Alpine foothills and Apennine mountain ranges where upland farming communities depopulated through the 20th century as younger generations moved to urban centers. What was once cultivated hillside is now birch, chestnut, beech, and oak. Italy is home to the highest density of animal and plant species anywhere in the European Union, and its expanding forest cover is playing an increasingly important role in supporting that biodiversity, with approximately 3 million hectares now designated specifically for nature conservation. The forests sequester tens of millions of tonnes of carbon annually, filter water, prevent erosion, and sustain the rural economies that depend on them. For a country most associated internationally with its ancient cities and Renaissance art, the quiet return of its forests over the past century is one of the most significant environmental stories it has to tell.
