From the carousel to the bobsled run: Legambiente boccia Cortina 2026

The environmental association publishes the “Nevediversa 2022” dossier. “The climate changes the mountain, but we insist with low-altitude lifts”

CORTINA. Four more round no’s Legambiente to links from Cortina ad Arabba (O Armentarola), from the Curtain to top Fertazza (laws Civetta), gives Padola to the top Colesei (or just below) and the bobsleigh track in Cortina. An attempt to stop that comes from the dossier “Nevediversa 2022”, published yesterday, which updates the list of disused ski resorts, those closed with an uncertain future and those that remain open thanks to the so-called therapeutic persistence. The dossier also focuses on infrastructure projects located in areas of great naturalistic valueor in any case not suitable for skiing. And this would be the area of ​​the Carousel of the Dolomites (Cortina – Arabba; Cortina – Civetta; Cortina – Val Badia). These are the threatened sites: Monte Pelmo, Mondeval, Formin, Ampezzo Dolomites, Col di Lana, Settsas, Cherz, Sella Group, Marmolada.

As a symbolic case of disused plants, Legambiente mentions that of Staunies, in Cortina, with a gondola and a chairlift no longer operational since 2016, but recently the Region has given the green light to a new structure. “It is a mountain struggling with the transformations caused by climate change and with an ecological transition that is struggling to take off, subject to forms of” therapeutic persistence “due to development projects”, denounces Luigi Lazzaro, president of Legambiente Veneto. “But the most disconcerting example in this sense we Venetians have at home, in Cortina, where the snow fell on the ski slopes by helicopter or rather transported by helicopter: it happened in January in the ski area of Socrepes e Tofanato be precise on the Tofonina. From those who have applied to host the next Winter Olympics, we will expect greater intelligence and competence in dealing with and managing the effects generated by the climate crisis, if this is an example of how they intend to govern the 2026 Olympics, it is more than legitimate to be alarmed ” .

The dossier notes that in Italy the plants “flock” but without snow. There are 150 new projects that threaten the sites protected by the Natura 2000 Network, 234 the disused plants (54 more than in the 2021 edition), 135 structures with an uncertain future and 149 cases of “therapeutic persistence”. A problematic picture emerges from the survey, with numerous proposals for plant engineering at very low altitudes, in contexts where snow will be increasingly rare and winters increasingly shorter, with the real risk that the good intentions of the European directives for the protection of areas of great naturalistic value and their extension from the current 22% to 30% are blatantly disregarded. Complicating everything is the imminent arrival of European funds provided for by the NRP: long desired but which, in a climate of unclearness, can become an easy flywheel for the realization of highly impacting projects.