Gries am Brenner/Vals Pilot Action Region: The Tyrolean Ski Tour Steering Concept - A Contribution to the Protection of Wildlife and Object Protective Forests

Abstract

When people engage in recreational activities in sensitive forest habitats, there can be unintended negative impacts on wildlife and forests. These include disturbance and displacement of wild game as well as damage to young plants (tree seedlings and saplings from ski or snowshoe compaction or direct physical damage from ski edges). These are just a few examples that highlight the need to manage the impact of recreationists with different measures in order to minimize the disturbance of game (especially red deer and roe deer) and the impairment of important object protective forests that this in turn causes. In Section 2 of this chapter, we describe the tourism, population, settlement area, economy, forestry and natural hazards in the GreenRisk4Alps Pilot Action Region (PAR) of Gries am Brenner and Vals in Tyrol, Austria. Section 3 provides an overview of the overarching initiative and integration forum, “Tyrolian mountains – experience together”, which was initiated by the Amt der Tiroler Landesregierung (Office of the Tyrolean Provincial Government). We then provide a description of the exact workflow, the possible measures and other details on ski tour steering options. Ski tour steering measures in the Gries am Brenner and Vals PAR can be found in Section 3.4, followed by a critical review of the experiences in Section 4.