As Switzerland’s Glaciers Shrink, a Way of Life May Melt Away
As Switzerland’s Glaciers Shrink, a Way of Life May Melt Away
Rising temperatures and retreating glaciers threaten Europe’s water tower, forcing local farmers to adapt and presaging larger troubles downstream.
Rising temperatures and retreating glaciers threaten Europe’s water tower, forcing local farmers to adapt and presaging larger troubles downstream.
For centuries, Swiss farmers have sent their cattle, goats and sheep up the mountains to graze in warmer months before bringing them back down at the start of autumn. Devised in the Middle Ages to save precious grass in the valleys for winter stock, the tradition of “summering” has so transformed the countryside into a patchwork of forests and pastures that maintaining its appearance was written into the Swiss Constitution as an essential role of agriculture.
It has also knitted together essential threads of the country’s modern identity — alpine cheeses, hiking trails that crisscross summer pastures, cowbells echoing off the mountainsides.
In December, the United Nations heritage agency UNESCO added the Swiss tradition to its exalted “intangible cultural heritage” list.
But climate change threatens to scramble those traditions. Warming temperatures, glacier loss, less snow and an earlier snow melt are forcing farmers across Switzerland to adapt.
More trees, more problems. Keep grazing or you’ll get wicked wildfires. Cheese is better than timber.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Devised in the Middle Ages to save precious grass in the valleys for winter stock, the tradition of “summering” has so transformed the countryside into a patchwork of forests and pastures that maintaining its appearance was written into the Swiss Constitution as an essential role of agriculture.
It has also knitted together essential threads of the country’s modern identity — alpine cheeses, hiking trails that crisscross summer pastures, cowbells echoing off the mountainsides.
He has also seen the glacier — which stretches around nine kilometers, or about five and half miles, up the Alps near Realp — grow black as protective winter snow melts to reveal previous years of pollution in a pernicious feedback loop.
The government is trying to address the changes and preserve Swiss alpine traditions, including with large infrastructure projects to bring water to the top of mountains for animals grazing in the summer months.
To take them back to their owners, who are mostly hobby farmers, he was joined by a crew of herders — known locally as “sanner” from the Middle High German samnen, “to collect” — who arrive by helicopter.
In other regions, warmer temperatures are making fields more productive, said Manuel Schneider, a scientist with Agroscope, the Swiss government’s national research institute, who is leading a five-year study on biodiversity and alpine pasture yields.
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