It is the kingdom of the gray wolf, so much so that it even deserves the name of Oasi del Lupo. And it is identified with a Site of Community Interest and with a Special Protection Area, to underline the extraordinary naturalistic value of Monte Polveracchio, which reaches 1792 metres.
The ancients affirmed that contact with the water of the Sale transformed everything into stone. The first verification of the particular properties which in that area characterised not the water of the river, but the thermo-mineral springs present in the area which took the name of Baths of Contursi (Bagni di Contursi), south and downstream of the hill of the city, in full river reserve with its luxuriant vegetation of white poplars, willows and holm oaks.
In the mating season, males fight each other with incredible violence. For some scholars, this is precisely the characteristic selected by an evolutionary process of over a thousand years on which the characteristic melanism of the Licosa blue lizard would also depend.
It was the sea, pitiful, that accompanied his white, now lifeless limbs, placing them on a strip of land in front of Cape Enipeo, the extreme southern offshoot of the Gulf of Poseidonia.
Twenty-five different habitats worthy of protection. An extraordinary biological variety represented by thousands of animal and plant species, many of which are endemic and rare. An endowment of archaeological sites and historical-artistic testimonies covering a time span of five hundred thousand years.
The underground spring keeps to generously deliver it to the sea. Still freezing cold, as it emerges from the belly of the earth in the large cave, the fresh water mixes with the salty one, transferring its freshness. A natural phenomenon that makes that stretch of sea unique, protected by the bay framed by nature, also giving the name it shares with the other distinctive elements of the place: Infreschi.