Snow of tomorrow | Wild, wild Alps - or not?

The dream of wilderness

And yet the Alps exert this attraction on many people. At weekends, they now queue up in traffic jams kilometers away from the cities. To experience the solitude of the Alps with many like-minded people. You could say that the Alps are booming in every respect. Skiing, hiking, mountain biking. It doesn't matter. The main thing is to get out of the city and the main thing is to do it every weekend. Scientists around the world are already interested in this phenomenon and the effects that nature has on people's bodies and minds: According to National Geographic, they found that regular time spent in nature reduces the risk of illness, boosts mental performance and lowers psychological stress. But what am I telling you? For us, skiing is primarily associated with making turns in mountain ranges. I would argue that the ski hall wouldn't have such an appeal to us.

But what is this wilderness that we've been longing for so much recently? Deutsche Umwelthilfe defines it as: "Wilderness - these are extensive areas in which natural processes can take their course unperturbed." And Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm's German dictionary has the following definition: "uninhabited, impassable area [...], also a rough or overgrown cultural region." However, only around four percent of the Alps as we know them today are still this legendary wilderness. The rest is cultivated landscape. Something the Brothers Grimm also spoke of.

The Alps as a cultural space

According to the International Commission for the Protection of the Alps (CIPRA), today's landscape in the Alps is the result of a close relationship between human activities and natural developments. The landscape of the Alps has been shaped by agriculture and mountain pasture farming for more than a thousand years. The Alps are an evolved cultural area that is also dependent on tourism as a form of economic activity.

Hunters and gatherers were followed by shepherds, who drove the first herds of sheep and goats across the meadows as early as the Neolithic period. According to CIPRA, some botanists are even of the opinion that the forest ceiling in the French Southern Alps is so low because shepherds with small herds of cattle were there early on, preventing the development of the forest. The forests themselves have also been managed since time immemorial: spruce trees were preferred and conifers were generally felled at an adult age, so that so-called cultivated forests rather than natural forests could develop. At the same time, the population increased and with it the arable land. Since the Neolithic Age, cereals have been the basis of food for the Alpine population. Around 1850, the population in the villages of the Alps peaked. This was followed by migration from the mountain regions. This led to an increase in cattle farming. The arable land became hay meadows and thus the alpine pastures we know today.