Wasting the Alps
The Alpine landscape, spectacular and solid though it seems, is fragile. Now it is threatened. Tourism in the area has exploded. There are 40,000 ski runs. Passengers can be whisked to the summits at the rate of 1.2 million per hour. Hotels, railways, lifts, cable cars and ski pistes are unbalancing the delicate Alpine ecology of pasture and forest.
Also, mountain agriculture no longer pays its way, so pastures are deteriorating. And acid rain is killing the forests. The result is more and more floods, avalanches and erosion. Can the Alps survive as the winter playground of Europe? Narrator Andrew Sachs Music WILFRED JOSEPHS Film editor NICK RAYNOR Written and produced by CHRISTOPHER LA FONTAINE
Horizon editor ROBIN BRIGHTWELL
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