Baltea Runner ASD ©
I am bec
HELLO SKYRUNNERS!
I am Bec (the Ibex in the dialect of these valleys), the "Prince of Gran Paradiso." In short, I want to tell you about the wonderful place where I live and that you will discover next July 30th by running in the sky at the Royal Ultra Sky Marathon Gran Paradiso. Needless to say, this place is called Gran Paradiso National Park!
For those coming from farther away and who don't know these places (and I know there are many of you), let me tell you that we are in the mountain range of the Alps and specifically in the northwestern part of Italy. Here you will find the highest mountains in Italy and Europe, first and foremost Mont Blanc (4810 m). Among these is also Gran Paradiso (4061 m), which is the highest mountain entirely within Italian territory, and, above all, the Gran Paradiso National Park, the first park in Italy.
It's curious that the Gran Paradiso National Park was ultimately born from the passion of the Kings of Italy for hunting ibexes (!). Yes, in the 19th century, the populations of the alpine valleys, like those of Gran Paradiso, hunted ibexes and in general all game out of necessity for food, so much so that some species, including us, were on the verge of extinction. King Vittorio Emanuele II, the first King of Italy, a great hunting enthusiast (that was the custom in those times) but also fond of simple life in the mountains, in 1856 declared the mountains of Gran Paradiso a Royal Hunting Reserve. To facilitate his hunting trips (so called because the King's servants would beat sticks together to drive the ibexes toward the King, who was waiting in ambush), the local populations were tasked by the King to build the extraordinary network of the Royal Hunting Roads of Gran Paradiso: 300 km of high-altitude roads (now used by hikers and where the Royal is run) that the King traveled on horseback with his entire entourage of servants, reaching altitudes over 3000 m where he could hunt us (poor) ibexes. With only the King hunting, our population began to grow again.
In 1919, King Vittorio Emanuele III (the grandson of Vittorio Emanuele II) declared himself willing to donate to the Italian State the 2,100 hectares of the Royal Hunting Reserve, on the condition that a national park be created (what a great idea!). On December 3, 1922, the Gran Paradiso National Park was established, the first Italian national park.
A little over a hundred years have passed since that historic date and a lot of work has been done, so much so that the park is now part of the elite of the 23 parks in the world included in the Green List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Now we are well protected here and many of us have migrated to other mountain ranges to repopulate them with ibexes. But it's not just us: the Gran Paradiso National Park is true wilderness of the high alpine altitudes and so in the next episode I will tell you about the wonderful and noble nature of Gran Paradiso.
Bye!
Baltea Runner ASD ©