As a newsletter published in five languages, my life is very exciting, not to mention complicated. There is a lot going on in the Alps and, since Brussels has also recently started taking an interest in my mountains, I have plenty to tell. I sift through hundreds of e-mails and magazines to see where what model project is going ahead, which horror is being constructed and which ground-breaking decisions are being made where. This makes things very hectic, as life in the Alps is becoming ever more complex.
My editor and the director of CIPRA constantly say that this Alpine-wide communication in German, Italian, French, Slovenian and even English is very important. There are so many mountains in the Alps that your view is sometimes blocked: one hand often doesn't know what the other is doing. And then there are all these different languages and dialects! Yet the Alps are everywhere somehow the same: there are bears that break into holiday homes looking for a snack, while the trucks that rumble past need enormous holes dug for them. There is artificial snow for the tourists, while climate change works against biological diversity.
The Alps are pretty big. While the states know this, they often can't see the Alps for their mountains of paper. I came to life in 2002, the International Year of the Mountains, first every week and now once a month, with each edition reaching 30,000 people. I have yet to meet a government that, in its heart of hearts, wishes to make the Alps and their inhabitants truly happy. We should really be up to it: we have enough money, we haven't yet ruined everything and there are many visionary people committed to making life better.
So I promise that I'll carry on telling you how things stand in the Alps, while I look forward to relating your tales of how you are making life better in the Alps. And thanks for joining me in celebrating my tenth birthday on the International Day of the Mountains!
Yours,
alpMedia