Austrian alpine club leads mountain conservation battle
in Europe

By Bob Berwyn

Traffic, ski area expansions, resort sprawl, air quality, habitat loss, and affordable housing:  the list of environmental issues in the Colorado high country has become a familiar litany for anyone who spends even a few minutes per day scanning local and regional newspapers.

It’s easy to get lost in the maze of politics and rhetoric surrounding these topics. But it is interesting to note that other parts of the world face similar challenges. Tyrol, for example, is the Austrian state that most closely mirrors Colorado in its role as the epicenter of mountain and ski tourism in the U.S. It is therefore not surprising that Austrian conservation groups are fighting battles similar to those being waged by their American counterparts. The charge is being led by the venerable Austrian Alpine Club (Oesterreichischer Alpenverein). The Austrian club’s history dates back more than a century, when climbing and hiking enthusiasts from the cities began to explore the craggy peaks, building thousands of miles of trails and establishing an extensive network of backcountry shelters and huts. More recently, the club has assumed a leadership role in a transnational conservation effort aimed at protecting undeveloped areas in the Alps and preserving mountain culture and heritage in the region.

Transportation is a key issue here and there. In Colorado, the I-70 corridor has been the center of attention in recent months as state planners and local communities grapple with the vexing question of how to bring people to the mountain towns safely, efficiently, and with a minimum of environmental impact. In Austria, communities along the Brenner highway are asking the same questions. The Brenner route has connected northern and southern Europe via Innsbruck and a mountainous bottleneck in Tyrol since Roman times. It is a crucial corridor for commercial truck and tourism traffic.

But intense use of the current highway has raised quality-of-life and environmental issues for communities along its path. European authorities have set a cap for truck traffic across the Brenner Pass to try and limit impact. They have also established a regulatory system that involves so-called eco-points while simultaneously encouraging alternate routes and other transportation modes. Truck traffic is also restricted at certain times.

They are discovering that the limits are unrealistic. According to a May 28 story in the Tiroler Tageszeitung, traffic in 2002 exceeded the cap for a fourth year in a row, and Tyrolean officials say they see little chance of meaningful enforcement-Ñthis despite the fact that the problem has been considered critical for many years. As early as 1998, for example, local residents fed up with the problem took matters in their own hands and blockaded the highway for thirty hours in a peaceful protest. A German-based trucking company subsequently sued for about ten million dollars in damages. But on June 12 of this year, the European Supreme Court decided that the protest was legitimate since it had been properly noticed and sanctioned by authorities, as reported by the Salzburger Nachrichten, a regional daily published in Salzburg.

Climate change
drives issues

Climate change is driving many of the challenges faced by environmentalists in Austria’s Tyrol. The alpine region is laced with more than 1,200 ski lifts, and by some measures it is one of the most intensively developed mountain areas anywhere in the world, especially in terms of its tourism infrastructure.

As scientists track rapidly receding glaciers and warn of shorter ski seasons and higher snow lines, the pressure to develop high-altitude glaciers for skiing has grown, according to Josef Essl, an environmental expert with the Austrian Alpine Club. That growth threatens to “inhale“ some favored backcountry terrain, he added.

One of the at-risk areasÑfrom the perspective of backcountry accessÑare the glaciers, including the vast snow and ice fields around the Wildspitze, the Tyrol’s highest peak. The glacier ski area here faced considerable opposition when it was first proposed in the 1970s. At that time mountaineers and other residents rallied to try and preserve the area as an undeveloped high-mountain sanctuary.

Now, plans to develop additional terrain in the area are again drawing fire. Ski area operators want to build new lifts on as-yet undeveloped lobes of the glacier and blast a return trail back to the valley floor, as well as create a lift-served link with the adjacent Oetztal. Those projects would change the backcountry character of the approach to the Wildspitze from the Braunschweiger hut, a traditional staging area for tours in the region. Similarly, in an adjacent valley, the Kaunertal, a similar battle is looming over an expansion on to the Gepatschferner.

Notwithstanding this opposition, not everyone thinks the expansions are bad. After touring to the Wildspitze, I threaded my way back between crevasses to the ski area’s summit restaurant, where Barbara Gastl is pouring cold drafts. Along with her boss, Reinhold Schuetz, Gastl says the intense competition among ski areas means the Pitztal must keep pace with its neighbors. “It’s eat or be eaten. That’s how it is in nature. Everybody survives,“ Gastl says. According to restaurant manager Schuetz, criticism of the ski area and the current expansion was centered around a few local hotel owners. “They said, Ôlet’s save the valley for our children.’ They didn’t like the fact that outside investors financed the development,“ Schuetz said. Other than that, the opposition came from outside environmental groups who aren’t dependent on the tourism the ski area brings, he added.

The Austrian Alpine Club’s Joseph Essl complains that the Tyrolean government caved under pressure from economic interests and recently weakened an environmental law that was originally passed to protect glacial reaches. “We advertise that we protect our glaciers, but the political reality is different,“ Essl says.

According to Essl, as much as eighty percent of local residents oppose additional glacier ski area developments, a figure he says is supported by repeated surveys. But instead of listening, the region’s leaders are practicing politics as usual, he says.

Fear of economic and political reprisals has silenced some critics, who look to the Alpine Club to represent their interests; but expansion plans have also spawned some grassroots actions, with valley residents blockading roads and backcountry skiers holding placard vigils in threatened areas.

“People are calling us (the Alpine Club) and asking us to recommend ski areas where there is no snowmaking and where the villages have retained some of their alpine charm,“ Essl says.

Alpine treaty marks big step
in preservation fight

The view from the Wildspitze encompasses wrinkled glaciers and innumerable toothy peaks, including several summits in Italy and Germany. Indeed, for many years, the alpine spine of Western Europe marked political borders. In its most recent political realignment, however, much of Europe has adopted an open-border policy. Gone are the guard posts and fenced border crossings; they have been replaced by souvenir stands and other signs of the thriving international commerce spawned by the political and economic union.

The new order reflects the wider globalization trend that has contributed to an unprecedented level of prosperity for some regions that for centuries seemed almost untouched by progressÑincluding tiny sleepy alpine villages suddenly staring at a ravenous international tourism dragon.

Tackling challenges that are regional or global in nature requires a broad approach, Essl says, outlining the terms of a recently ratified treaty, the “Alpine Convention,“ that establishes a supra-national management framework for the region.

The treaty provides common ground for sustainable economic growth while preserving cultural resources and protecting natural resources, he explained. The hope is that, if resort communities across the region all have the same goals in mind when they plan for the future, they will adopt complementary policies. Along with protecting the few remaining undeveloped areas, the Alpine Club advocates for the development of sustainable tourism, as well as for the preservation of local agricultural and cultural traditions.

The alpine treaty is anchored to a growing international recognition of the fragility of mountain ecosystems and their importance as water sources for population centers far away. The United Nations marked 2002 as the International Year of the Mountain, and at the U.N.’s Sustainable Development Summit in Johannesburg last year, the final action plan included a reference to the importance of preserving mountain regions across the planet.

Closer to home

As Essl outlines the issues, his remarks seem to echo those of a Colorado-based EPA official who reviews environmental studies for ski areas and other projects across the Rocky Mountain region. As in Europe, competition in the U.S. among resorts and tourist destinations is spirited, to say the least.

Resorts in Montana and Utah might point to developments at Vail or Summit County as they push for approval of a new lift or, as in the case of Snowbird, a plush new mountaintop lodge. While separated by thousands of miles, the developments all have similar impacts, while officials have little idea what the cumulative long-term environmental effects might be.

Some environmental groups have called for the U.S. Forest Service to take a comprehensive look at ski and resort development with a program-matic study to answer some of those questions. Local Forest Service officials have countered that such a study would be too broad to address site-specific impacts. Moreover, the agency already has national policy guidelines in place to guide local jurisdictions. Nevertheless, such a broad-based effort could at least acknowledge that what is happening at resorts in Utah and California is likely to affect future plan s at Colorado resorts.

There has also been a long-standing push to pass a Northern Rockies Ecosystem Protection Act, legislation that could force decision makers to take such a wide-angle view when considering impacts. If that measure ever is approved, a similar effort could take place in the Southern Rockies. There has even been some nascent discussion of a Mountain Ecosystem Protection Act, perhaps modeled after federal and state laws designed to protect coastal ecosystems. Advocates say such a measure is overdue. It might not be the most flexible tool for local decision-makers, but could spark awareness of the fact that mountain regions across the countryÑand around the worldÑface similar challenges when confronting issues of growth and development, protection and preservation.

The world is becoming an ever-smaller place, and while this fact can lead to greater pressures on our environment, our resources, and our economy, increasing globalization also offers us a greater awareness of how people in other parts of the world address similar problems. We can learn from our neighbors. P

Bob Berwin is a writer specializing in environmental land issues.