At the Service of Nature

Green region: around a quarter of the territory in South Tyrol is made up of either nature reserves or national parks. The vital importance of this land as a natural habitat for both people and animals earned its designation as protected area.

At the Service of Nature Andreas Gasslitter and Georg Antholzer are the gamekeepers for the Alpe di Siusi holiday area.

Andreas Gasslitter manages the game reserve of Castelrotto, while Georg Antholzer oversees the Tires-Fiè reserve.

T The two men know the area like the backs of their hands, and spend their every day in the woods and mountains. Together with their trusty friends, Baverian mountain hounds Laika and Bill, they look after both the game and other animals of the lands, survey the fauna and safeguard their habitats. Their office is mixed woodland of predominantly spruce and larch, together with some pine, fir, ash and birch. At an altitude of around 1,800 m, there are also some Arolla pines. Georg Antholzer’s beat of Tires-Fiè covers around 8,500 hectares, roughly two thirds of which are part of the nature reserve. The Castelrotto land covers about 12,000 hectares, around a quarter of which is nature reserve terrain, and is under the watchmanship of Andreas Gasslitter.

Text: Katja Sanin Photo: Helmuth Rier

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Hunting in South Tyrol is regulated by national legislation, and one of the jobs of the gamekeepers is to ensure that these laws are upheld. Every local resident over the age of 18 who fulfils the requirements – that is to say, has passed their hunting test and holds a valid shotgun certificate – can shoot in the area. On the Tires-Fiè land, there are currently 48 licensed hunters, 72 in Castelrotto. They pay their hunting permits annually and the money goes to pay the keepers, who are not employed by

the state. For the gamekeeper it is fundamental to work in unison with hunters, farmers and foresters. In spring, together with the hunters, they carry out a count of the animals in the area and set out an exact shooting plan, which must be approved by the local shooting commission.

If there are any diseases in the area, such as, for example, the current outbreak of Sarcoptic mange in the chamois, the keepers monitor it closely with a powerful telescope. Sarcoptic mange is a parasitic skin disease for which no cure exists, comparable to rabies. This plague has been raging in the Dolomites since 2000 and has killed around 80% of the chamois population in the area. In the Alpe di Siusi holiday area, the first case broke out two years ago.

Habitat Protection. At the beginning of the 1970’s, the first nature protection measures of the Alpe di Siusi were set out in land management plans. Under strong protest, traffic and farming was curtailed, and the area, still unpolluted, came under the protection of the South Tyrol Nature Reserve. The farmers feared for their existence with these menacing limitations, the hunters feared for their game, tourism saw all plans for cable-car »

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Both gamekeepers, Andreas Gasslitter and Georg Antholzer, foster the vital teamwork between hunters, farmers and foresters.

expansion and hotel-building thwarted, and tourists disappearing before their very eyes. Just a few years later, however, the area of Tires al Catinaccio and Fiè allo Sciliar applied to extend the reaches of the park. In addition to the Sciliar-Catinaccio area, in the Dolomites today there are six further nature reserves, the Stelvio National Park, and 175 natural biotopes.

The Sciliar-Catinaccio nature reserve was founded in 1974, covers an area of 7,291 hectares and stretches over the districts of Tires, Fiè and Castelrotto. It is home to a large biodiversity and provides a habitat for protected species such as the eagle, tawny, Tengmalm’s and pygmy owls, capercaillie, grouse, falcons, hawks and buzzards. There is also a pair of eagles in the nature reserve. “Eagle chicks are born in spring, mostly just one chick, rarely two. They start to fly in summer and stay in the nest till winter, when they have to find their own home. In 2015, the eagles didn’t nest”, says Georg Antholzer. “Predatory songbirds, nocturnal and diurnal raptors are also under protection and cannot be hunted. Another rare bird that we have here in the Sciliar area is the three-toed woodpecker”, he adds.

The infamy of the hunter. The shooting of game is permitted from May 1st to December 15th in the South Tyrol. In the early Stone Age, hunting provided a supply of food and, alongside the meat, all the valuable by-products of the animal, including bones for tools, or pelt for clothing. Today, hunting serves as a form of pest control as, when too many of a particular species live in one area, they cause fraying, peeling and bite damage. When we talk of hunters today we automatically think of the shooting aspect, but hunters have long been doing so much more than that: at the beginning of summer, for example, when the roe deer, a protected species in the area, give birth to their fawns in the long grass, the farmer and gamekeeper work together; as this is the exact time when the haymaking starts, the animal is in mortal peril. In the bestcase scenario, the farmers let the keepers know when they’re going to be cutting the hay. They then pace the fields and, together with the hunters, set up visual and acoustic “scarecrows” which encourage the doe to retreat into the woods to give birth. “This difficult job has now been eased somewhat by drones with thermal imaging cameras, which fly over the fields and show us the exact spot where a fawn is” says Andreas Gasslitter. »

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“What animals need more than anything is peace, especially in winter”. The relationship between nature conservation and tourism is one of complex interaction. On one hand, they are in fundamental conflict: the protection of precious natural habitats is at odds with tourism, which endangers it or renders it completely unfeasible. On the other hand, the development of a tourism region is based on an uncontaminated landscape and protected areas. They also provide homes and a local economy, as well as the purity of the countryside

and limited exploitation of tourism that makes them such a superb destination for a relaxing retreat.

“What animals need more than anything is peace, especially in winter”, explain the keepers. In the nature reserve, there are excellent winter habitats in sunny spots with very little snow, where the animals are well-sheltered. It’s all very different on the Alpe di Siusi, where the animals retreat to their

winter hideouts during the cold months and, given the lack of food supply, move around as little as possible to conserve energy.

Nature and environmental conservation are part of an ongoing debate, regarding which the Alpe di Siusi holiday area, amongst others, is of one mind: protected areas are important for sustainable regional development, and quality of life cannot be measured merely on the basis of economic indicators such as GDP. These areas, with their

multi-functional countryside, take on a number of tasks which are essential to the livelihood and wellbeing of the people who live there. It is thanks to the nature protection regulations at the beginning of the 1970’s that South Tyrol is classed as the “greenest” region in Italy: 60% percent of the land area lies at above 1,600m a.s.l., 42% is woodland and a quarter of the region’s lands are designated as either a nature reserve or a national park. «

Nature reserves are important for sustainable regional development.

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