Circular Strategies for Protected Areas: Valorization and Recycling of Forest Resources in the Madonie Park (Italy)

The emerging concept of circular parks positions protected areas as active generators of shared value, as they integrate biodiversity conservation with natural resource optimization, local economies, and social cohesion. This perspective challenges traditional passive management by applying circular economy principles to parks as dynamic territorial organisms embedded within a regional socio-ecological metabolism. The research explores and tests circular park approaches starting from forest-related resource flows in areas where ecological richness coexists with socio-economic fragility. Focusing on the case study of the Madonie Regional Park (Sicily, Italy), the research investigates alternative pathways for the reuse of retrievable biomass by relating material flows to local social, economic, and cultural activities potentially involved in circular processes. This study supports the design of recycling, repurpose, and re-vision strategies to transform residual biomass into regenerative local value and strengthen the territorial resilience in inner areas characterized by demographic fragility despite being endowed with significant environmental and cultural capital. Through a design-oriented approach, the research experiments with alternative circular strategies in a case study, proposing a shift from extractive and mono-output models towards multi-output approaches and from an energy-centered towards a community-centered model. This perspective emerges not only as a cultural challenge but also as an opportunity to build an operational and replicable planning practice within the Italian and European park system, contributing to the debate on the ecological transition of fragile territories.