Best of Worlds: Life at its Alpine Limits

For 5000 years, man has sought to inhabit the more accessible areas of Europe, but at its very heart, in the high zones of the Alps, there exists a world parallel to ours. This is a world in which species have survived dramatic climatic upheavals, human exploitation of the land, and now the pressures of mass tourism. The Alps are home to plants and animals that owe their success to an amazing capacity to live in conditions that, for other species–humans included–would be barely tolerable. For them, however, this is everyday life.