White Winter - A Season on the Northern Alpine Rim

On the Northern Alpine rim, winter can still be marvelled at in all its glory every year. In the valleys and on the slopes the snow is still so thick every year that the alpine huts are snowed in up to the windows. The animal inhabitants need strategies to survive the cold season. And some apparently do it so easily that they even raise their young in the middle of winter.

We revel in fairytale backdrops: Iced waterfalls, cascades of icicles, forests covered deep in snow, bizarre snow sculptures on mountain peaks, frozen bodies of water and mountain landscapes wrapped in white. In addition to these alpine scenes, views of snow-covered alpine pastures, mountain farms and royal castles also provide the location for the various nature stories. But how do the animals, plants and fungi cope with the annually recurring ice age, which from our perspective is a time of hardship.

But the many adaptations in nature prove: winter is not so much an annually recurring adversity, but rather an integral part of the natural cycle of the year and the whole natural world. All the species here are adapted to cold and frost. That is why the animals and plants of the snowy areas at the edge of the Alps suffer particularly from climate change and go into a tailspin with the unpredictable ups and downs of the snow line. It is still possible to observe how the animals are changing their behaviour, altering their diet and - apparently - turning their ecology upside down. And even that exists in the mountains: animals and plants that need winter even in summer...