Many biodiversity types, especially the typical ones of Italian rural landscapes, depend on the traditional rural practices and are connected with an active presence of the man, not with abandonment. The complex landscape mosaics once dominating many rural areas of the Italian peninsula, but today much more limited in their extension, are particularly rich in biodiversity. Of all the animal species associated to these landscapes probably one deeply affecting the emotional perception of most people is the swallow, that all of us have often seen drawing mysterious endless routes in the blue skies of summer days. Also for these reasons humans have also associated to swallows many symbolic meanings: hope, fertility, sacrifice, rebirth, renewal of life. This article on the Corriere della Sera explains that the strong reduction of swallows in our skies is not linked to particular forms of pollutants used in farming, as we might expect, but to the reduction of the complexity of landscape mosaics typical of the Italian historical rural landscapes that we are trying to save.
