Naples, Falcone's Talea lands in the Land of Fires: trees of legality against the Camorra

Napoli, Falcone's Talea lands in the Land of Fires: trees of legality against the camorra

In the area with the highest concentration of illegal landfills, the Carabinieri are using the roots of the judge killed by the Mafia to stop the Camorra and school dropouts.

The Carabinieri of the Naples Provincial Command and the forestry officers of the Caserta Biodiversity Unit brought the "A Tree for the Future" project to the heart of the Land of Fires. The initiative took place at the "A voce d'e Creature" Foundation in Naples, a juvenile delinquency prevention organization active in the Arenaccia Poggioreale neighborhood, and involved over one hundred students.

The foundation, directed by the priest Don Luigi Merola, operates in one of the city's most crime-ridden areas. Here, the Camorra controls the territory, and environmental pollution is a structural emergency. The Carabinieri's project aims to combat precisely this dual front: environmental crimes and the recruitment of minors into criminal organizations.

"A Tree for the Future" was born in 2020 from an agreement between the Ministry of the Environment and the Carabinieri Biodiversity Group. The goal is to create a "large, widespread forest of legality" through the planting of native species. Since 2021, the project has included the "Falcone Cutting," obtained from the ficus tree that grew near the home of Judge Giovanni Falcone, killed by the Mafia in 1992.

The event was attended by Lieutenant Colonel Marilena Scudieri, commander of the Caserta Biodiversity Unit, and Lieutenant Colonel Giuseppe Musto, commander of the Naples Carabinieri Group. The students received the first Falcone cuttings, a symbol of the fight against mafia and environmental devastation. Each seedling will be geo-referenced via QR code to monitor its growth and CO2 absorption.