Into the Forest

We have two educational trails, the Lynx Trail and the Bear Trail. Two trails were created, one for the lynx and one for the bear, with the aim of bringing ordinary people, including tourists, closer to these two animals, and of introducing them to these two large mammals, which are extremely elusive and rare everywhere in Italy. The lynx is by far the rarest mammal, but the bear is also very difficult to spot. They are animals that ordinary people will almost never be able to see, but these two educational trails nevertheless make it possible to understand them a little better. There are also life-size silhouettes of almost all the other animals found in the Tarvisio forest: the wolf, the golden jackal, the wildcat, and so on. There are also panels describing these species a little. Among those of greatest interest in this area, there is certainly the beaver. As early as 2018, a first specimen arrived from Austria, and it is an animal that had been absent from the national territory for over 500 years. We are fortunate to live in a forest that has been preserved to this day in an exemplary way, very healthy, still very intact, and so when the beaver arrived it found the ideal conditions in which to settle.
The lynx is not only the most mysterious, but in absolute terms the rarest animal in the Italian wildlife panorama. There are truly very few specimens in all of Italy. We of the Lynx Project have for many years now been devoting ourselves to trying to safeguard this species. At present the project is proving successful, because the number of animals is increasing. We hope, over time, to be able to save them from extinction.
I always advise people not to go looking for animals. You need to be lucky enough to encounter them on our walks. It can happen, but it is very difficult, because they are mainly nocturnal and very wary. The animals are there; they are always in the forest, even where we walk; perhaps they passed through the night before, but we do not know it. It is not easy even to see the signs of their presence, but a footprint, a trampling mark, perhaps in the grass, a tree scratched by the bear’s claws: these are all signs that are not easy to find. You need a little experience in order to see them, or someone to guide us and teach us how to recognise them.
The forest is never silent. I like going into the forest, I like listening to the silence, but then beneath the silence there are a thousand other sounds that are not always easy to hear. Just the tapping of a woodpecker in the distance, when you do not know what it is, suddenly becomes a deeply important sound.