Description
The environment/Fauna
The Valzanca and Valsorda State Forests extend into the basin of the Torrente Vanoi and constitute the compendium of Caoria, named after the neighbouring village. The entire area is part of the Paneveggio Pale di San Martino Nature Park and constitutes one of its most relevant and distinctive landscapes. Since the 1960s, the lower part of the forest has been the site of numerous private properties consisting of abandoned meadows, mountain huts, rural buildings and rustic cottages, which today, thanks to conservation work and the mowing of the largest open nuclei, constitute a socio-cultural heritage of great interest to both the local public and tourists.
The State Forest of Valzanca, which takes its name from the Forcella di Valzanchetta, collects the waters of the southern slope of the Lagorai, from Cima Cece and Cima Valcigolera and of the western slope of the Tognola to the confluence at Ponte Stel.
A particularly quiet and peaceful valley, it offers a natural landscape of striking beauty and originality. The state property covers an area of 827 hectares including pastures and unproductive areas. Slightly less than 570 are occupied by forests that are affected by past calamities and damage, such as wars, wind, crashes, which have created a prevalence of coetaneous formations dominated by spruce, with a good share of silver fir and the presence of beech in the undergrowth at lower altitudes and larch at higher altitudes.
Worthy of note are the large (non state-owned) pasture areas of the Malghe Miesnotta, Valzanchetta and Malga Fossernica di Fuori, outside the state-owned perimeter, from where one can admire the entire Valzanca forest complex, surrounded by the Lagorai peaks.
The Valsorda State Forest covers 850 hectares in the valley of the same name, rich in woodland where, between 1,200 and 2,080 metres, Norway spruce prevails, associated with silver fir below and larch in the upper part of the property, where it becomes predominant. Here and there, wide clearings host meadows and pastures with malghe (shepherd's huts), which are mountain pastures in the summer: famous and much frequented are Malga Valsorda (Municipality of Canal San Bovo) and Malga Arzon (state-owned).
At lower altitudes, there are settlements of numerous broadleaf trees such as the mountain maple, hazel, ash, white alder and tremolo poplar, as well as birch, willow and rowan.
The Lagorai mountain chain, opposite that of the Pale di San Martino and San Lucano, greatly influences the rainfall pattern in the forests, which remain high throughout the growing season.
Foresta demaniale di Caoria: la Valzanca; sullo sfondo le cime della catena del Lagorai (cima Cece, versante Stuat - Miesnazza)
The entire state-owned territory is interdicted to hunting, a choice that favours even more the conservation of the natural habitat and the repopulation and diffusion of sedentary wildlife.
Among the ungulates, the species most present are deer and chamois, while roe deer is under-represented in relation to the territory's potential. The galliformes are represented by the capercaillie, which is in decline due to unfavourable habitat variations caused by the abandonment of the mountains, the black grouse and, in ecotone environments, the black grouse. Carnivores include the fox and badger. Goshawks, sparrow hawks, honey buzzards, dwarf owls and red-legged owls and black, tridactyl and ashen woodpeckers are also reported.
History: the huts, the cheese factories, the Venetian Sawmill of Caoria
In the lower part of Valsorda at Fiamena and Val Redos, as well as in Tognola and Valzanca, dozens of tabià (haylofts) and casere (huts) are scattered over the territory, almost like small high-altitude villages that were once inhabited and lived in almost permanently from May to November. The geographic conformation of the territory, covered mostly by forests and rocky slopes, blends harmoniously with the cultural landscape, characterised by the presence of these settlements set in the gentle meadow slopes, a sign of the centuries-old presence of man in the typically Alpine sylvo-pastoral economy.
Looking closely at the present-day landscape of the Caoria Forests, we can read the rural history expressed by human labour over years and years of summer occupation, when with the cattle the population would move to higher altitudes and work the meadows and pastures. But also the enormous forestry work, when in autumn and winter numerous companies of lumberjacks cut hundreds of cubic metres of timber and transported it to the State-owned Sawmill in Caoria, a structure of the Provincial State Property Office, which took care of it, managed it and kept it in use until 2003.
In the Caoria Forests informed
Access
The forest can be reached via provincial road no. 56, which leads from Canal San Bovo to the village of Caoria. Specific access to the various sections of the forest is provided by numerous forest roads and paths closed to public traffic.
Management of the Forest is entrusted to the Provincial Agency for State Forests, Technical and Management Sector of Cavalese (TN), which through the "State Forestry Station of San Martino di Castrozza and Caoria" monitors and enhances the forest and the many activities that affect it.
