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The connection between religion, nature and conservation has become a prominent topic among scholars and conservation practitioners. Numerous studies have shown that spiritual beliefs have contributed to preserving important biodiversity in sacred areas around the world. In Western contexts, however, that link has been underexplored, perhaps due to a common view of Christianity as anti-naturalistic. Here, I rely on a literature review and first-hand observations to identify patterns and trends characterizing Catholic sacred sites in Central Italy. I show that a high proportion of the sites are located in natural areas, and that some types of sites and strands of Catholicism are associated with natural settings more frequently than others. Further, these natural sacred sites often display ecological features that highlight their important conservation role. Greater awareness and consideration of local spiritual heritages are recommended to guarantee more effective and integrated management of the sites.

Sacred natural sites (SNS) are instances of biocultural landscapes protected for spiritual motives. These sites frequently host important biological values in areas of Asia and Africa, where traditional resource management is still upheld by local communities. In contrast, the biodiversity value of SNS has hardly been quantitatively tested in Western contexts, where customs and traditions have relatively lost importance due to modernization and secularization. To assess whether SNS in Western contexts retain value for biodiversity, we studied plant species composition at 30 SNS in Central Italy and compared them with a paired set of similar but not sacred reference sites. We demonstrate that SNS are important for conserving stands of large trees and habitat heterogeneity across different land-cover types. Further, SNS harbor higher plant species richness and a more valuable plant species pool, and significantly contribute to diversity at the landscape scale. We suggest that these patterns are related not only to pre-existent features, but also to traditional management. Conservation of SNS should take into account these specificities, and their cultural as well as biological values, by supporting the continuation of traditional management practices.

Changes in land use are among the forces shaping Earth's surface. In many industrialized areas, the loss of a traditional state of dynamic equilibrium between traditional management and natural dynamics is followed by abandonment to regeneration processes. This can reduce ecological complexity at the landscape scale and negatively affect biodiversity patterns. In this study, we investigate the relation between land use change and plant species diversity in the network of protected areas (PAs) of the province of Siena (Tuscany, Central Italy). This is an area characterized by long-lasting human activities and highly renowned cultural landscapes. We used remotely sensed, mapping and ground based plant compositional data, to investigate the present pattern of plant species diversity, the changes of landscape structure and changes in forest habitats. Most of the plant diversity present in this network of PAs is due to broad scale gradients due to ecological diversity but also to human management. Most of the area is currently covered by forests and analysis of a historical sequence of spatial data reveals that this is largely a consequence of the abandonment of traditional management during the last decades. Finally, focusing on forest succession as a consequence of land use change, we demonstrate that species richness significantly declines with increasing age of forest stands. Taken together, our results confirm that the recent trends of rural abandonment are leading Communicated by Mauro Agnoletti.to homogenization and biodiversity loss in traditional landscapes of Mediterranean Europe. We discuss implications for policy, and suggest that PA management in cultural and historical landscapes should pay increasing attention traditional anthropic practices.

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Sacred natural sites (SNS) have gained recognition from conservationists, and are regarded as the oldest form of habitat protection in human history. Many case studies and literature reviews have been published on the subject. However, an updated and global-level synthesis on the effect of SNS on biodiversity conservation is still lacking. Here, we provide the first systematic review on SNS and biodiversity conservation, aiming to evaluate the effect of SNS across different: (i) continents; (ii) taxa; (iii) metrics. We checked 2750 papers and by applying inclusion criteria we selected 27 relevant papers. From these, we extracted descriptive data and 131 comparisons between SNS and Reference Sites. We applied vote-counting, multinomial and binomial post-hoc tests to the 131 comparisons. We found strong evidence that SNS have a positive effect on biodiversity, but also strong geographical and taxonomical biases, with most research focusing on Asia and Africa and on plants. We found that SNS have mainly positive effects on taxonomical diversity, vegetation structure and cultural uses of biodiversity. Our results strongly support the view that SNS have positive effects on biodiversity across continents and geographical settings, as found in a number of local studies and earlier overviews. These effects should be given official recognition in appropriate conservation frameworks, together with the specific forms of governance and management that characterize SNS. At the same time, further efforts are also required to fill the geographical and taxonomical gaps here highlighted, and to advancing our knowledge of SNS through more systematic research.

Healing Animals, Feeding Souls: Ethnobotanical Values at Sacred Sites in Central Italy. Ethnobotanical knowledge is a fundamental repository of the values and applications of different plants. This knowledge is often related to spiritual beliefs and religious sites, where plants have been nurtured and conserved for their use in rituals and traditional practices. While this link is well known for different areas of the global south, it has hardly been investigated in relatively more secular and modernized Western contexts. Here, we use first-hand vegetation surveys and published records to examine the occurrence of ethnobotanical values at 30 Catholic shrines in Central Italy, and compare them with an equal number of non-sacred control sites. We ask this: to what extent is there an association of useful plants with sacred places in Italy, as found in other cultural contexts? We show that a greater number of useful plants are found at sacred sites. While this is mainly a consequence of the higher species richness of sacred sites, an association with plants used in animal husbandry is particularly evident, and likely related to the deep historical connection between sacred places and pastoralist traditions in Central Italy. Also, we show that there are significant variations in the distribution of old trees; the largest specimens are found at the center of sacred sites, while tree size visibly decreases away from the shrines. This indicates also that individual trees have been actively managed and conserved at sacred sites, probably driven by the symbolic values that old trees frequently embody.Guarire gli Animali, Nutrire le Anime: Risorse Etnobotaniche nei Luoghi Sacri Naturali del Centro Italia. Il sapere etnobotanico è un fondamentale archivio degli usi e delle applicazioni delle diverse piante. Questo sapere è spesso collegato a credenze soprannaturali e a luoghi di culto, in cui queste piante sono conservate o coltivate per essere usate in rituali e altre pratiche tradizionali. Mentre un tale legame è ben noto per diverse aree del Sud del globo, esso è stato a mala pena investigato nei contesti più moderni e secolarizzati del mondo occidentale. In questo contributo, utilizziamo appositi rilevamenti floristici per esaminare la presenza di risorse etnobotaniche in trenta eremi e santuari dell'Italia Centrale, e istituire un paragone con altrettanti siti di controllo. Ci chiediamo: c'è un legame tra luoghi sacri e piante utili in Italia simile a quello 1 , Bronx, NY 10458-5126 U.S.A. rinvenuto in altri contesti geografici e culturali? Dimostriamo che il numero di piante utili è in effetti maggiore nei siti sacri che nei siti di controllo. Mentre questo è in larga misura una conseguenza della più elevata ricchezza di specie presente nei luoghi sacri, un'associazione con piante usate per pratiche veterinarie è particolarmente evidente, e verosimilmente legata al profondo legame storico tra luoghi sacri e pastorizia nell'Italia Centrale. Dimostriamo inoltre che ci sono variazioni significative nella distribuzione de...

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