When the water came, it was right in the middle of the nesting period. Many eggs were lost; we saw them destroyed here. But the birds eventually returned to the salt pan. Maybe at first, they sought refuge in areas where they were more comfortable, where there was less fresh water and more salt water. But now they're back. Because nature healed itself much faster and smoothly than we could.
The Po Delta is Italy's largest wetland, spanning over 700 square kilometres across two regions. It is one of Europe's vital environmental sites, comparable to the Camargue in France. In 2015, it was designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, joining a global network of 700 reserves.
The Cabras lagoon is the largest in Sardinia. It witnessed a dramatic transformation from a feared to a revered natural habitat. Once notorious for breeding mosquitoes that spread malaria, the lagoon was largely avoided and undervalued. Eventually, it was also heavily drained. Today, it is one of the country's most important wetlands, celebrated for its biodiversity and as a crucial sanctuary for migratory birds.
One interesting aspect of flamingos and their migrations is that they did not originally nest in Italy. They are migratory birds that explore various locations to find suitable habitats for their needs. However, since 1993, they have begun nesting in Sardinia, and since 1994, on mainland Italy. Their wandering nature allows them to colonize new wetlands for nesting.
SWAMPOWER
Unveiling the threats endangering Mediterranean wetlands
A long-term investigation
From unwanted to protected, wetlands have recently entered the spotlight. This focus stems from the urgent, almost desperate race to employ every possible strategy to mitigate the effects of climate crisis and global change. That is why wetlands — which comprise salt marshes, lagoons, deltas, artificial lakes, ponds, swamps, mangrove forests, oases, rice paddies, and water basins — appear now more important than ever.
Wetlands are distinct ecosystems saturated by water. They are vital CO2 emissions sponges capable of locking up carbon for thousands of years. Wetlands also boast exceptional biodiversity, serving as nesting and refuge sites for many migratory species. They buffer against rising saltwater levels, protect freshwater basins, and act as barriers against coastal erosion. They help renew soil fertility and vitality and are a fantastic tool against floods and extreme weather events.
For this reason, countries signed the UN Ramsar Convention in 1971 to conserve our wetlands. Yet, wetlands remain one of the most threatened ecosystems in Europe as countries actively encourage exploitation, supporting intensive agriculture, industrial extraction and mass tourism. Most wetlands in Europe – the bloc’s most significant carbon sinks and biodiversity hotspots – are exploited beyond repair due to decades of industrial activity.
This investigation will explore some of the most important wetlands —those playing a crucial role for local communities, those most at risk, and some already undergoing recovery and improvement. Combining historical information, investigative journalism, on-the-ground reporting, scientific data, and experimental use of remote sensing and AI-based satellite image analysis, we aim at visualising the health and changes of the environments at the centre of our stories. Looking into what is affecting and threatening our wetlands. And which are good practices that can protect them.
Rethinking
environmental management
It’s the early 1970s. The Club of Rome is working on The Limits of Growth, a report that will see the light in 1972 and quickly become a foundational pillar for rethinking economic development with a more environmental focus. The same year, Stockholm hosted the first United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, a pivotal gathering since it was the first time a world conference addressed the environment as a significant issue. The meeting led to the adoption of the Stockholm Declaration and an Action plan for the human environment, and it paved the way towards creating the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
However, this was not the first global effort to address environmental challenges. Just a year earlier, on February 2, 1971, in the Iranian city of Ramsar, on the shores of the Caspian Sea, representatives from seven countries signed the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance – commonly known as the Ramsar Convention, the first global tool for wetland protection. Over the years, the number of signatory countries has grown to 172, covering over 2,400 Ramsar sites worldwide, spanning approximately 2.5 million square kilometers (here is a report with the updated list, published in March 2024). Unfortunately, though, the Convention is not very binding nor widely respected.
Italy joined the Convention in 1976. Our country holds 57 Ramsar sites spread across 15 regions, covering nearly 74,000 hectares. Of these 57 internationally recognised wetlands, 9 are in Sardinia, six of which are in Oristano.
To read more about the importance of wetlands and the regulatory mechanisms set up to protect them, read our episode Wasted Wetlands - A series exploring the mediterranean's wetlands.
The surviving pond
"The other day, on the opposite side of this pond, I saw a flamingo born in 1983 born in France. A 41-year-old flamingo that probably travelled all around the Mediterranean."
Gabriele Pinna, an ornithologist and delegate for the Lipu (Italian League for Bird Protection) in the province of Oristano, seems to know the flamingos one by one. After all, he has been studying them and dozens of other bird species still inhabiting this rare biodiversity treasure for years.
We are at the S'Ena Arrubia pond in the Gulf of Oristano, in central-western Sardinia. These areas were once considered unhealthy lands to be reclaimed. However, the large-scale land reclamation projects of the 1920s and 1930s, although applicable in some cases for fighting malaria, ultimately caused an unprecedented loss of habitats and biodiversity.
S'Ena Arrubia is an emblematic case. It is part of the vast swamp south of Oristano that was drained during the fascist era between 1934 and 1937. Beyond the road that now separates the S'Ena Arrubia pond from the Sassu pumping station, there used to be around 200 marshes interspersed with dunes, covering a total of 18,000 hectares. The reclamation operation wiped out nearly everything, flattening the dunes, covering the marshes, and transforming this immense wetland in Oristano into fertile plains for agriculture and livestock. The focal point became Arborea, a town in the province of Oristano, which until 1944 was called Mussolinia di Sardegna: the reclamation turned it into one of the island's most productive areas but at a very high cost.
The S'Ena Arrubia pond, 300 hectares, is one of the few wetlands that survived the reclamation. Saved from being drained, it has become an independent basin, fed by artificial freshwater channels, and is a nature reserve. Here, Gabriele Pinna and his fellow ornithologists come regularly to conduct bird population surveys and monitor the health of the protected areas.
In front of us, dozens of flamingos feed undisturbed, their elegant stance like that of tightrope walkers. "You can tell these flamingos are feeding," Pinna explains, "because they rotate slightly and stir the mud with their feet, which they then filter through their beaks."
To help us better see the flamingos, Gabriele Pinna pulls a telescope from the trunk of his 4x4 Panda and sets it up a few meters from the S'Ena Arrubia pond. As he continues talking, he says: "This is a delicate pond because it's a water collection basin, essentially a hydraulic structure. But it's still a pond, a natural reserve protected by Ramsar."
Ah yes, the Ramsar Convention. The S’Ena Arrubia lagoon, along with the lagoons of Corru S’Ittiri, Marceddì and San Giovanni, Pauli Maiori, Mistras, Cabras, and Sale ‘e Porcus, make up the six Ramsar sites in the Oristano area. The other three Sardinian protected wetlands are the Cagliari Lagoon, the Molentargius lagoon, near Cagliari, and finally, added in 2021, the mouth of the Rio Posada in the province of Nuoro, in northern Sardinia.
However, there is no comprehensive management of the lagoons. The future might see some improvement through the Natura 2000 Network, an EU tool designed to ensure the long-term preservation of natural habitats at the European level. "But unfortunately, the current measures are not enough," Pinna continues, "and the municipalities either lack the resources or the expertise to implement serious measures for protecting the land. I say they lack the passion." 'Here, every pool, every channel is just as important as a Ramsar pond. For example, I've conducted a census of heronries. In a drainage canal near Arborea, which was completely covered with reeds, I found about 600 pairs of cattle egrets. That canal could very well be Ramsar-worthy. You can find similar examples wherever you go in the Gulf of Oristano. It's a waste because nobody even knows about these wetlands,' says Pinna."
Europe's wetland heritage is heavily exploited, and most countries don't prevent this; on the contrary, they often support intensive agriculture, industrial extraction, and mass tourism. But from our very first visit to S'Ena Arrubia, it is clear to us that the wetland heritage in Italy is not just exploited: it is ignored, unknown, forgotten, and therefore wasted.
Mapping out all Sardinian wetlands
We put on hold our investigation on exploitation to deep dive into how much Sardinian wetlands are studied, monitored, understood even before being considered a resource.
We started collecting and reading scientific papers and technical reports trying to untangle trying to untangle what the scientific community had, as is often the case, started to understand through data some time ago: the wetland heritage is far richer, more valuable, and, at the same time, more threatened than we had imagined.
There is one study that stood out - a 2021 paper published in Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems.
Mauro Fois, the first author on the paper, is a botanist at the University of Cagliari. We meet him at his office, at the Botanical Garden in Cagliari, a perfect setting for our conversation. With the generosity typical of some scientists, he shares with us the method and data from an unprecedented operation: mapping, "pool by pool," all of Sardinia's wetlands.
The very same ones that, according to ornithologist Gabriele Pinna, are potentially just as important as Ramsar sites. The result?
2.567 wetlands, most of which had never been studied before.
This number is likely to increase: during new field trips, it's not uncommon to discover small, previously unidentified ponds. Since the 2021 study, conducted as part of the international MedIsWet project funded by the Mava Foundation, Fois has continued updating the Sardinian wetlands database. The mapping, carried out using the Rapid Assessment protocol defined by MedWet, combined satellite data with on-the-ground observations.
"We started with a preliminary inventory," Fois explains, "by identifying and digitising all visible wetlands using high-resolution satellite images from Google Earth. Where there was uncertainty about the area of a wetland, we defined the largest potential polygon based on seasonal flooding and vegetation cover fluctuations." This preliminary inventory was then validated through field observations. Fois and his colleagues visited a large portion of the identified wetlands in Sardinia, thus supplementing the satellite data with various indicators.
Using Fois's data and cross-referencing it with the Ramsar database, our team created this visualisation of all known wetlands in Sardinia to date.
To read more about our findings in Cabras and Cagliari on Sardinia’s wetlands, read our related episode of our series Wasted wetlands: the hidden heritage of Sardinia’s wetlands.
Unprecedented destruction
Satellite data is a very valuable tool. It allowed Mauro Fois to extend his research of Sardinian wetlands across the entire region, giving him the ability to do a first exploration and mapping from his office.
For years, Earth observation satellite data have provided increasingly accurate information about the health of our planet, offering also a bird’s-eye view of the climate crisis’s global scale. More recently, satellite data have been used increasingly during emergency management, post-extreme-event analyses, and damage assessments.
One recent case, in Italy, has been that of the flooding in Emilia-Romagna, in May 2023. A flooding that almost completely destroyed one of the oldest salt pans in the world, and one of the most peculiar Italian wetlands, the Cervia salt pan. The salt pan completely submerged underwater has become one of the symbols of the flood that struck Emilia-Romagna last year. It was the night between May 16 and 17, 2023. The region had already been severely hit by violent rains and floods starting on May 3. However, for the Cervia area, that second wave marked a turning point: the Savio river broke its banks and poured into the salt pan, completely submerging the emblem of the city – the city of salt, as it is known.
“When we finally managed to enter the salt pan, more than twenty days later – it had been impossible before – it was truly heartbreaking. We had lost everything.” Giuseppe Pomicetti, president of the Cervia salt pan park, could not be more specific.
Cervia - The salt pans submerged by the Romagna flood
Through the words of Giuseppe Pomicetti, President and CEO of Cervia saltpan Park, we reconstruct the events during the days of the flood that struck Emilia-Romagna between late May and early June 2023. The video is in Italian, but subtitles can be enabled via the icon at the bottom right.
The damage was immense.
The flood filled all 827 hectares of the salt pan with fresh water, causing the loss of the last two years' harvests and halting new production.
The amount of water from the Savio that flowed into the Cervia salt pan dissolved nearly 150,000 quintals of salt. "We lost the entire 2022 harvest and the last remnants of 2021," continues Pomicetti. "There was also damage to vehicles and all the production departments, such as the machines that sort and package the salt and the offices. Computers, desks – everything was underwater. I couldn't enter the salt pan for 25 days after the flood, and even then, I had to wear thigh-high boots, getting soaked up to my waist. It was a real blow because we had truly lost everything."
Yet, things could have been worse. Pomicetti smiles bitterly: "By flooding, the salt pan saved the city of Cervia – well, almost all of it."
During the flood in Emilia-Romagna, the Civil Protection relied on data from the European Copernicus satellite system to obtain a series of geospatial insights to support rescue operations and begin damage quantification. These services are part of a kind of 'fast lane' available in emergencies, activated through the so-called Copernicus Emergency Management Service (EMS). The EMS service, launched in 2012, provides satellite information worldwide for various types of emergencies with a much higher spatiotemporal resolution than standard satellite monitoring.
The Civil Protection requested that the EMS be activated twice during the Emilia-Romagna flood, corresponding to the emergency peaks: on May 3, 2023 (EMSR659) and on May 16, 2023 (EMSR664).
We used these Copernicus data to visualise the exact extent of the flood-affected area in the Cervia salt pan. Today, more than a year after the flood, many are reflecting on what needs to be reconsidered systematically to counter the next extreme event. It's a complex issue, requiring an interdisciplinary approach and the integrated use of available scientific data. Satellite imagery, which played a key role during the flood, continues to be a valuable tool.
Measuring damage and losses
If it is possible to quantify the damages of emergencies and disasters, such as a flooding or a prolonged drought, to productive activities, homes, and infrastructure - collectively known as the built environment -the environmental impacts of a flood are much harder to measure.
Chiara Arrighi, a hydrology expert, spoke with us in a videocall from her Florence office during a scorching July afternoon when temperatures approached 40°C, making the flood seem like a distant memory. Arrighi is an expert in floods, droughts, and water resource management and holds a UNESCO chair in hydrogeological risk prevention at the University of Florence. She is also the co-author of a recent study published in Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, which analysed the environmental impacts of the 2023 Emilia-Romagna flood on protected areas, including the Cervia salt pan. It is one of the first studies to bring this issue to the scientific community's attention. But the task is far from easy. Over the years, significant progress has been made in estimating the more easily monetisable impacts, such as damages to buildings or infrastructure, while all the impacts on cultural and environmental assets are much more difficult to estimate. Our research aims to highlight that we still do not fully understand these effects, and therefore, we need to study them."
The picture that emerges is interesting. Pollution, damage to local flora and fauna, and ecosystem disruption were among the most significant environmental impacts observed. "The main impact was undoubtedly on water quality," continues Chiara Arrighi. "With the floods, most urban sewerage and water treatment systems stopped functioning." In other words, without sewers and treatment plants, both urban and agricultural or industrial wastewater went untreated and ended up in the rivers, carrying an organic pollutant load.
To know more about the impact of the 2023 flooding on Cervia salt pan, read our episode Wasted Wetlands. Cervia, the salt pan submerged by the 2023 flood in Romagna
The park that never was, between wind farms and pesticides
Protecting the environment, especially vital water resources, demands a strategic and long-term approach. Unfortunately, political and economic interests often prioritize immediate gains over the necessary sacrifice for environmental protection and sensible resource management, including water, land, and biodiversity.
In Oristano, where our exploration began, such challenges are evident. Local journalists Raffaele Angius and Andrea Carboni from the Sardinian outlet Indip have reported long-standing delays in efforts to coordinate protective measures for the area’s wetlands. Oristano's wetlands, which stretch over 140 kilometers of coastline across eleven municipalities, face severe threats from pollution and energy projects, exacerbated by a century of land reclamation and industrial agriculture expansion.
In 2017, a proposal aimed to unify local administrations to protect 7,705 hectares of these wetlands through the creation of an integrated park called Progetto Maristanis. However, this initiative failed to progress, and experts now warn that the wetlands' stability is at risk from nearby industrial pollution, with additional threats posed by proposed wind and solar farm developments.
Responsibility for water protection in Sardinia is managed by Arpas, the regional environmental protection agency. It monitors all surface and groundwater, aiming to achieve the European directive's goal of "good ecological and chemical status" of the waters by 2027. Recent data from 2021 highlight serious pollution concerns along the Oristano coast. Since 2020, Arpas has identified above the legal limit levels of glyphosate, AMPA, and even banned substances like metolachlor in the area's watercourses.
Arpas also regularly monitors groundwater, detecting pesticide residues across various sites. For example, in Arborea, concentrations above the threshold of the banned insecticide Azinphos-methyl were found up until the first half of 2021. Furthermore, high nitrate levels have been recorded in groundwater, leading to severe ecological impacts such as the eutrophication that caused a significant fish die-off in the S’Ena Arrubia pond.
Additionally, proposed wind and solar farms threaten the local avifauna, with studies by Lipu and BirdLife International mapping out risks to bird species. Despite the ecological sensitivity, the planned Maristanis Park, which was intended to consolidate protection efforts across 11 municipalities covering 7,705 hectares, has seen little progress towards integrated management. A "Wetland-Coastal Marine Contract" was signed in 2021, but comprehensive coordination remains elusive, leaving the wetland system vulnerable amidst increasing renewable energy projects.
Find out more about what the main players working and living in the region, politicians and activists, sat about the potential of the Maristanis park to protect the environment and to become an opportunity for the local community by reading the episode of our investigation “Maristanis, the incomplete: the park that never was, between wind farms and pesticides”, by Raffaele Angius and Andrea Carboni, reporters at Indip.