Park of Stirone and Piacenziano

The park includes the area of ​​the Stirone stream that forms the border between the province of Parma and Piacenza and the Piacenziano area, five valleys rich in fossil finds in the Piacenza area.
Thanks to the inclination of the layers and their orderly succession, the Stirone stream allows you to retrace, from mountain to valley, the environmental and climatic evolution of the Padano Basin over the last 6.5 million years. For this reason the park is the destination of many paleontologists and geology enthusiasts. The landscape is characterized by stagnant waters colonized by the Cattail, a symbolic plant of the park, by riparian woods with willows that adapt to the floods of the stream and, finally, by agricultural fields.
The waters of the Stirone stream are home to an interesting fish fauna, composed exclusively of cyprinids: chub, vairone, barbel, loach, roach and river goby, the latter exclusive species of the Po valley.
The riverbed is home to many birds, including the gray heron, the little egret, the night heron, the mallard and the kingfisher. In the wooded area you can discover the sparrowhawk, the lodolaio, the scops owl, the long-eared owl, the stone marten, the weasel, the fox, the badger, the squirrel, the porcupine and the dormouse. The bee-eater and the Nightjar are species worthy of great attention.
At the Podere Millepioppi, well confiscated from the Mafia, there is the park visitor center and the MUMAB – Ancient Sea and Biodiversity Museum. The exhibition tells both the interesting paleontological heritage of the area through finds, reconstructions and interactive videos and the richness of biodiversity of the flora and fauna of the park.