La natura e la mano dell'uomo
Tuesday morning went pretty much the same as Monday morning; we went to the Liceo Scientifico Cecioni and worked on posting messages to the project blog at sauvonsthepianeta.blogspot.com Students were able to complete the messages they'd started the previous day and also post messages about our visits on Monday.
Around eleven we went into the natural history museum and the botanical gardens. We weren't able to visit everything in the museum, but we did spend a bit of time in the cetacean room, where they had a number of displays about the aquatic environment. We learned that the region of the Mediterranean between the Livorno coast, Corsica and Sardinia was a "cetacean reserve", with some 18 species, from dolphins to blue whales. We also saw displays about two species that had disappeared from the Livorno coast area: seals, which fisherman saw as threats or competitors for their catch, and so killed or drove out of the region, and sea turtles that used to come ashore to lay their eggs, but are no longer able to, since the entire coastline has been occupied by summer vacationers and concrete development projects like hotels or the "bagni" we saw on Sunday.
Our guide also spoke about the indirect effects of human action on the environment. Vegetal debris washes up on the seashore, and people find it "unaesthetic", so they have it cleaned up and carted off… without realizing that these deposits protect the shoreline from erosion. They pour concrete and build hotels over the dunes, and then are surprised to find that the forested areas just inland are no longer protected by the dunes from the salt-laden wind off the sea. The seashore erodes each year a little more, the forests die out, and suddenly people are crying out to save the environment… from their own actions.
After the natural history museum and a nice lunch in a nearby park, we visited the Museo Civico in the Mimboni house, with its expositions of local painters, including Giovani Fattori, Guglielmo Micheli and Plino Nomellini. It was a very interesting visit, not only for the expressionistic, tachistic and pointillistic-style paintings, but also for the architecture of the villa itself, partly destroyed during the war but renovated by the city of Livorno. Students took notes and seemed in general very interested in this cultural aspect of their trip.
Finally, that evening, our students went out for a night with their Italian correspondents. They didn't get back until nearly midnight, but they all had a great time and were eagerly begging for more such opportunities. I think they are already looking forward to the visit of the Italian students to Châteauroux next September.
Philip Benz, Livorno, 16 March 2010
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