Mountain Wilderness
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| Founded | 1987, Biella, Italy |
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| Focus | Environmentalism, mountain |
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Area served
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Global |
| Method | Organization of events, campaigns, lobbying,, consultancy |
| Website | www.mountainwilderness.org |
Mountain Wilderness is an international non-governmental organization dedicated to the preservation of mountain areas, in their natural and cultural aspects. The organization was founded in Europe and has a stronger presence in alpine and pyrenean regions. It has, however, a worldwide reach, with representatives and actions on all continents.
Mountain Wilderness shares some of the values and objectives of alpine clubs and environmentalist organizations, but is clearly distinct from both. Mountain Wilderness was founded by mountaineers and places a stronger emphasis on the human experience of wilderness than on the exclusive defense of wildlife for its own sake. Even in the most remote mountain regions, there remain vanishingly few untouched wilderness zones in a strict sense. Contrary to what a literal interpretation would suggest, Mountain Wilderness does not focus on such "pure", pristine wilderness. Nearly all mountain landscapes, and, to an even higher degree, the perception of mountains by humans, bear a strong cultural imprint. Mountain Wilderness works towards the inclusive preservation of this natural and cultural mountain environment at large, in three complementary ways :
Mountain Wilderness was founded in 1987 in Biella, Italy during an international conference convened by Ludovico Sella, scion of a prominent piedmontese family of financiers, statesmen and mountaineers, among which Quintino Sella, the 19th century founder of the Italian Alpine Club. This conference was a follow-up to a similar gathering of mountaineers convened by the Italian Academic Alpine Club on 8 August 1986, on the occasion of the 200th anniversary of the first ascent of the Mont-Blanc. On this occasion, a “manifesto for Mont Blanc” was issued and signed by a number of renowned mountaineers, among which Sir Chris Bonington, Yvon Chouinard, Reinhold Messner, Doug Scott. This manifesto called for a foundational human right to “open spaces for free adventure”. The Biella conference attracted a larger attendance of mountaineers and intellectuals from all over the world, several of whom were to become founding guarantors and founding members of Mountain Wilderness. Among them were Haroun Tazieff, Kurt Diemberger, Jim Bridwell, John Hunt, Wanda Rutkiewicz. The "Biella theses", on which the above mission statement is based, were written during this meeting.
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