THE MORAINIC HILLS PARK OF CASTIGLIONE DELLE STIVIERE

The local Morainic hills park of Castiglione delle Stiviere is a remarkable place for its extra-urban interest. It has been established in 2005 and it covers 1,179 hectares in the far North of the Province of Mantua, heart of the Morainic amphitheater.

Strongly connected to the town centre, the park conquers the town area with its forests and waterways. Inside the park, the Castle of the Gonzaga family with its forest dominate the town where St. Aloysius Gonzaga  was born – he is the worldwide Patron of youth and he is also the Patron of Castiglione delle Stiviere.

The paths of the park inspire interesting excursions for discovering nature (with birds such as bee-eaters, hoopoes, horned owls, least flycatchers and even red and green woodpeckers, cuckoos, goldfinches, orioles, and mammals such as foxes, hares, martens, weasels, hedgehogs, squirrels,voles, badgers although thy are rare), going on through the town centre, which shows the glorious past of Castiglione, with its historical and monumental heritage: from the International Museum of the Red Cross to the Cathedral; from the Saint Aloysius Church to the Museum Aloisiano up to the ancient noble buildings such as the Palace Bondoni Pastorio.

The agricultural landscape is another very peculiar feature of the park and it also includes interesting ecosystem units, such as forests, dry meadows and wetlands, more valued by the presence of many plant and animal species, typical of these natural environments.

The Morainic hills characterizing the park are both a migration corridor for a lot of birds species and also an important crossroad for a lot of birds of prey such as the European Honey Buzzard,the common Buzzard, the sparrow-hawk and other birds covering the Alpine valleys and flying over these hills and finally spreading into the Po valley.

Every year, thousands of birds of prey migrating from Northern Europe to Africa are counted, confirming that this area is one of the most important places in Europe for the study of the autumn migration of diurnal birds of prey.

In the park, the woods with the best margins of naturalness are the copse woods, which are mainly found on the steep slopes of the hills, North and North-east facing. That is about isolated islets, narrow strips of land, wrecks of forests that once covered all over the hills. 

The formation is typical of the hills, made up of species, choosing sunny and chalky slopes such as the hornbeam, the downy oak, the Fraxinus ornus, the European nettle tree, as well as oak, hazel and wild cherry.

In the PLIS area, some reforestations are reported, such as that one in the area called the “Valley” in the Castiglione territorial dominion, where over eighteen thousands plants have been planted in the last twenty years, helping the wildlife restocking in the wetland nearby.

The wetlands in the PLIS area are both those ones typical of the valleys in the Morainic hills, such as that one called the “Valley” in the North-east of the park, both the sunk wetlands, once a lake basins, such as those near the historic Convent of St. Maria, another tourist attraction, in the heart of the park.

While the wetlands are a small part of the park geographical area, they shelter an extraordinary variety of habitats and animal species (herons, red and white egrets, egrets, kingfishers, teals, bitterns, night herons, coots, little grebes, hawk marshes) as well as plants (reeds, sedges and hygrophilous forests and a rich herbaceous riparian and tall trees vegetation), being a remarkable opportunity of visiting for all nature-lovers.

The dry meadows in the PLIS area – they are small, scattered and clinging, especially on the ridges and on South-facing slopes - are characterized, as the name itself shows, by a marked aridity, a limited development and by widespread plant formations, blooming in early spring, before the summer drought dries up the ground too much.

As far as these meadows is concerned, it is significant the presence of some species of orchids, as the Ophrys, Anacamptis, Cephalanthera, Orchis, and Platanthera genus, while concerning the fauna, we have insects, reptiles and small mammals, among which there is a relevant abundance of birds, especially a lot of birds of prey.