Italy

A committee composed of members of the Italian government, the region Lombardy and the automous provinces of Trento and Bolzano has decided that the Stelvio national park/I should be run directly by local authorities. It foresees that the park will be managed by the Autonomous Provinces of Trento and Bolzano and the Region Lombardy, in collaboration with the municipalities concerned. According to WWF Italy, this could lead to an unnecessary and potentially damaging administrational fragmentation of the Park.

Mountain regions are footing the bill for the Winter Olympics - the Winter Olympics bring fame and glory and an economic revival to the regions. For a fortnight. Leaving behind an oversized infrastructure, debts and empty beds. That, in a nutshell, is Turin four years after the 20th Olympic Winter Games.

In September CIPRA focused on the issue of sustainable mobility and transport as part of cc.alps and co-organised two events on these topics.

Since the foundation of Italy's first national park in 1922, the Alpine Ibex has been preserved from extinction for the past 100 years or so. Now the ibex population at the Gran Paradiso National Park/I is seriously at risk. Three quarters of the young animals are dying during their first year of life. In 1993 the population totalled around 5'000 animals; today the population at the Gran Paradiso National Park is just under half that number. It is still unclear what is causing the death of the young bi-ungulates.

ASSOCIATION “Alpine Town of the Year” - Bolzano’s municipal councillor Helmuth Moroder explains how the “2009 Alpine Town of the Year” intends to achieve ITS aim OF BEING carbon-neutral by 2030.

The Swiss National Park (SNP) is currently developing a web based tool to analyze barriers and corridors of the large pilot region Rhaetian Triangle. Furthermore, two local initiatives are concretely acting for the restoration of ecological connectivity. The new map application will allow comparing a freely defined area with other areas in the neighbourhood and identifying the fields with high need of action according to selected indices.

In 2009 the cc.alps project team attended a wide range of international events where it presented the results of the project.

Since the close of the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin many of the sports facilities and installations have been left abandoned. The five ski jumps in Pragelato, for example, for which the building costs exceeded 34 million Euros, are now closed off and unused.

The ClimateHouse Agency in Bolzano has won one of the seven prizes of the CIPRA's cc.alps Competition for its energy saving initiatives. We spoke to its Director, Norbert Lantschner at our "Cool Heads in the Hothouse" conference.