The well-being of the Alpine region as a habitat for nature and people requires solutions that both sides consider, writes Reto Branschi, CEO of the Davos Klosters destination.
The picture is truly not always pretty: When mountain bikers are out and about on the Davoser Schatzalp, they sometimes find their own paths. Davos offers a very good network of hiking trails, and nothing stands in the way of shared use by hikers and bikers. However, individual passages and curves are too narrow or otherwise unsuitable for bikers, so they simply avoid and find their own paths across the meadows. The resulting new lanes in the grass are quickly washed out into deep channels by rain and are then no longer driveable for bikers.
So they search for new tracks, and the game starts all over again at the expense of the poor meadows. One solution would be simple and effective: The neuralgic sites are known and could be selectively expanded with simple means for bikers. The “wild” bike tracks would then be restored. Bikers, hikers and nature would be in balance again.
Were it not for the environmental associations: Protecting poor meadows, according to the argument, cannot be reconciled with expanding bike trails. A reasonable, selective protection measure for the environment is prevented precisely by environmental associations.
It should be obvious to everyone that something needs to be done on the Schatzalp: Mountain bikers are an ever-growing group of guests in summer and they are looking for their own paths. Prohibition boards, fences or rules may work, but only if the infrastructure for bikers also represents a real alternative to “wild” biking. This does not change the prevention tactics of environmental associations; anyone who argues pragmatically is biting on their granite.
“Sustainability also has an economic component”
Change of scene: On a February day, 15 vehicles head to the Flüela Pass. The road is covered with snow and closed so that it can be used for safety training. While driving on snow is being trained on the road, a course is set up on the gravel lake at the top of the pass for safe skidding, braking and evasive maneuvers on snow and ice. Environmental associations are also opposed to this activity.
The road used for training courses is open to free traffic anyway from the beginning of May to the end of December. During 32 course days in February and March, however, a total of 15 vehicles are said to pose such a great burden on nature that training should be banned yesterday rather than tomorrow.
Although the two examples are very different, they have one thing in common: When it comes to exercising their right of appeal, environmental associations seem to know no limits. Protecting nature is undoubtedly an important task, and as a tourism professional, I have a genuine interest in it.
More and more, however, it is not nature and certainly not proportionality that are at the center of the considerations, but the sheer exercise of power. The fact that their relentless prevention tactics endanger many jobs and, in the case of bikers, sometimes even nature, does not make association officials blink an eye.
The Alps are wonderful nature, but also a living and economic space for many people. If we want to continue living in the mountain valleys of our canton, we cannot simply demonize and forbid all human influence.
We must be able to use the Alps sensibly and sustainably. However, sustainability not only has one dimension of nature conservation, it also has an economic and social component. As a tourism professional who loves the valleys of Grisons as much as nature lovers, I would like to see the preservation of jobs and economic living space in the Alps incorporated into the deliberations of environmental associations just as the environmental concept into the considerations of tourism professionals when developing the holiday canton of Grisons.
Reto Branschi (55) is CEO of the destination Davos Klosters.