Green Mountain Tourism: is it?

Hands off the Lagorai  (byFranco Perlotto)

This article by Franco Perlotto illustrates a trend which is spreading across the Alps of a so called green “mass” tourism. The basic idea remains the same as it is in the valleys: to bring as many people as possible to areas where they can spend their money by exposing them to attractive products. But in this case, the “product” is the wild nature of the mountain and the price it pays is often neglected.

Franco Perlotto

Wilderness areas, protected or not, are increasingly essential to humanity. Today, unfortunately, under the mask of sustainable tourism, entire mountains are affected by an increasingly obvious degradation.

It is not by providing mountain huts with legally compliant renewable energy or sanitation systems that the sustainability of these structures will be ensured if they are then transformed into large gourmet restaurants at high altitudes. Of course, this will attract more and more numerous and sophisticated customers, but by losing the simplicity of the typical mountain lifestyle, the whole environment suffers.

The mountains of Trentino have long experienced a delirious wave of deliberate anthropisation which, while respecting the rules of so-called sustainable tourism, is devastating one of the most beautiful regions in Italy. All this is achieved with the tacit support of public bodies and associations of private owners of the structures themselves.

Mountain huts suffer from disproportionate rent costs, forcing their managers to excessively increase their ability to collect income in order to meet their commitments to the various owners.
Increasingly, access roads are being facilitated. In the near future, we can even expect to see crossing and passing areas on some trails, as has already happened in some equipped sections in the Dolomites. In addition, to satisfy the adrenaline of those who would not otherwise go to the mountains, it is staged, equipped with robust via ferratas with spiral staircases and ever longer and bolder Tibetan bridges. The old huts are gradually deformed into restaurants.

The most striking example of this approach is the new TransLagorai project which, with the clear intention of increasing turnover in these mountains, will in fact devastate one of the few areas of true wilderness in Trentino.

This absurd and devastating projectmust be stopped.

More on the TransLagorai project (italian)

Freely Translated from Italian by BM: see the original post on the Mountain Wilderness Italy web site.