When we think of a woodland, a pasture or a mountain, we are used to asking who owns it: a private individual or a public body. But there is another way of owning and managing land, one that is much older and is still practised in various parts of Italy.
Collective estates and civic uses link certain areas not to a single owner, but to a community. Woods and pastures can be used collectively and passed down through generations, while maintaining a purpose that is closely connected to the land and the people who live there. In Piedmont, for example, land subject to civic use retains specific characteristics. It is an asset linked to the community and cannot be treated as ordinary private property.
In the Val Grande area, this is not simply a legal issue. In Caprezzo, there has been a long standing debate about the role of collective ownership in managing natural resources and the opportunities it offers for developing more participatory approaches to land management and local development.
• A natural area does not simply provide economic resources. It generates biodiversity, water, knowledge, culture, relationships and a sense of belonging.
• From Val Grande to the territories of the Kaska Nations in Canada, different models show that conservation can become more sustainable when the people who live in and manage an area are involved in protecting it.
• Restoring nature therefore also means rebuilding the relationships between ecosystems, communities and institutions that allow an area to continue functioning over time.
An area is not simply a piece of land
Between Val Grande National Park and the Sacro Monte di Ghiffa Special Nature Reserve, Fondzione Capellino is currently supporting a project to restore ecological connections between fragmented habitats.
The corridor covers approximately 1,400 hectares across the municipalities of Caprezzo, Cambiasca, Vignone and Arizzano. The work includes pastures and marginal agricultural land, wetlands for amphibians, watercourses, invasive species and small habitats that can act as pathways between the two protected areas. The land is either publicly owned or belongs to collective estates managed by the local community.
It is an example of how restoring biodiversity is not simply about protecting plants and animals. Behind every territory there are also different forms of ownership, rules, local authorities, agricultural activities, knowledge and people who must decide how that land will be used in the future.
Conservation, therefore, cannot be considered separately from the people who manage, use and understand the land.
Protecting a place also means creating the conditions for someone to continue looking after it.
Thousands of kilometres away, in northern British Columbia, the same principle takes on an even clearer form.
The territory of the Kaska Nations, known as Dena Kayeh, encompasses some of the most pristine landscapes in North America. It includes forests, mountains, rivers and habitats for species such as caribou and grizzly bears. The Kaska communities are seeking to protect this area through the creation of an Indigenous Protected and Conserved Area.
In 2026, Yellowstone to Yukon and representatives of all the Kaska Nations took an important step by signing a Memorandum of Understanding. The agreement sets out a shared vision for the conservation and stewardship of Dena Kayeh and supports the process of protecting Dene K’éh Kusān.
It is the first comprehensive partnership of its kind between the Kaska Nations and an environmental organisation. According to Yellowstone to Yukon, it is the result of decades spent building trust and relationships. At its heart are shared governance, common values and recognition of the role of communities in decisions about their own lands and waters.
The point is not simply to involve local people in a conservation project that has already been decided elsewhere. It is about recognising that the relationship between a community and its territory can itself contribute to the ability to conserve and care for that territory.
This perspective also changes how we understand the word ‘wealth’.
A forest is certainly valuable for the timber it can produce. A pasture may have agricultural value. A territory can generate tourism and economic activity. But its wealth also includes healthy soil, water, the species that live there, the knowledge built up by local communities, the social relationships it supports and the possibility of passing all of this on to future generations.
If these different forms of value are considered separately, we risk seeing only part of what a territory provides. Bringing them back together means making decisions, responsibilities and consequences visible at the level of the territory itself, where their effects can be properly understood.
For this reason, restoring a woodland, a pasture or an ecological corridor does not simply mean repairing a damaged ecosystem.
It also means rebuilding the relationships that allow that system to continue to exist: between different habitats, between human activities and natural processes, between institutions and the local area, and between people and communities.
Val Grande and Dena Kayeh are profoundly different places. Yet they raise the same question: who will safeguard what we decide to protect today?
Conservation may begin with a law or a project. To become sustainable, however, it must become part of the relationships that hold a territory together.
In this sense, restoring nature also means restoring society’s ability to recognise, protect and regenerate its shared wealth.