Police arrested 23 mafia suspects in Sicily on Monday including an alleged clan boss following a recent attempt to assassinate the chief of the Nebrodi national park, Giuseppe Antoci.
Sixteen of the suspects were taken to prison and seven were placed under house arrest, police said.
Among those in jail is Antonio Forace, nicknamed 'The Calabrian' due to his alleged close ties with the Calabrian mafia or 'Ndrangheta, according to investigators. He is said to be a local mafia boss in Tortorici, a town lying on the edge the Nebrodi park in the province of Messina.
Italy's interior minister Angelino Alfano described Monday's operation as "a body blow to a mafia clan operating in the Nebrodi area that specialised in extortion, drugs trafficking and drugs pushing".
Officials ordered security in the Nebrodi area to ramped up after gunmen opened fire on Antoci in an ambush as he drove along a highway running through the national park last Wednesday.
Boulders were placed across the highway in a bid to prevent Antoci's escape from the ambush but the gunmen fled when his police body guard returned fire. Police said they recovered Molotov cocktails from the scene.
Sicily's governor Rosario Crocetta asked for more police protection for Antoci after the assassination attempt, saying his fight against mafia business interests in the area put him at "great risk of elimination".
Antoci was mailed anonymous death threats and bullets beginning last July after he played a key role in cancelling contracts with mafia-linked farmers for 4,000 hectares of grazing land in the Nebrodi park. The farmers had been claiming 2.5 million euros of agricultural subsidies annually for the land, mainly from the European Union.
Antoci also helped set up a task-force to combat cattle rustling, mistreatment of animals and illegal slaughterhouses in the Nebrodi park.
