Climate crisis: Alpine clubs need 95 million euros for huts and trails

This sum is the result of a needs assessment for the next five years, explained Gerald Dunkel-Schwarzenberger, President of the Association of Alpine Clubs (VAVÖ), at a press conference in Vienna on Wednesday. Thawing permafrost, water shortages and extreme weather events are the main problems.

The VAVÖ acts as the umbrella organization of the twelve alpine clubs in Austria, which are responsible for a total of 429 huts, houses and bivouacs. The appeal to the federal government is primarily about the 272 mountain huts in extreme alpine locations and the more than 50,000 kilometers of trails, emphasized Dunkel-Schwarzenberger. “Climate change has long since arrived in the mountains.” Permafrost and severe weather events are “huge issues.”

Heavy rain, storms and permafrost

“The paths are particularly affected by climatic changes,” explained Alpine Club President Wolfgang Schnabl. Heavy rain and storms are occurring at increasingly shorter intervals and causing damage. Added to this is the “permafrost, which is thawing and where some huts are actually slipping away,” said Schnabl. Investment costs have doubled in the past ten years.

In 2022, the Defreggerhaus on the Großvenediger was temporarily closed because the material cable car needed for its operation was built on permafrost, said Michael Platzer, managing director of the Austrian Tourist Club, as an example. A second hut on the Großvenediger was closed due to a lack of water and tourism in the region collapsed. Storms also sometimes cause problems for the supports of the material cable cars.

Replacement buildings of huts cannot be financed

In recent years, the clubs have been able to “get by” with the existing funding and membership fees from their more than 900,000 members, explained Platzer. However, this does not mean that they can finance the construction of replacement huts, which “usually cost three to four million euros.” VAVÖ President Dunkel-Schwarzenberger spoke of a “challenge that we can no longer overcome without public support.”

According to Dunkel-Schwarzenberger, the individual clubs have seriously analyzed what is planned for the next five years. The result: “We need special funding of 95 million euros.” The current six million euros in funding for the alpine clubs only covers around 18 percent of the ongoing maintenance costs for huts, he explained. In addition, there are membership fees and a lot of voluntary work for maintaining the paths and looking after the mountain huts.

The associations are focusing on climate friendliness and are building biological sewage treatment plants and photovoltaics “wherever we can,” emphasized Nature Friends managing director Günter Abraham. “All of this will no longer be enough to keep these locations,” he said. “We need these 95 million euros to keep some of our huts, not all of them.” The special funding should be set up in a year and anchored in the next government program, they hope. To emphasize the demand, an information campaign and a petition were launched under the title “Emergency call from the Alps.”