Why people are for – and against – a new national park

A local citizens’ initiative to set aside a mountainous corner of Switzerland as the country’s second national park could fail to win support at the very level it began, the grassroots. A couple of chickens cross the road in Hinterrhein, the last village on the road up to the San Bernardino alpine pass in the southeast. Otherwise, all is quiet. The sign on the Bachhuus Chäller restaurant says ‘open’ but no guests appear to be inside. Many Swiss towns and cities, from Geneva to Zurich, are full to bursting with housing at a premium but villages like Hinterrhein have trouble stopping residents from moving away. The village has lost a third of its population in the last ten years. Most of the 69 remaining are farmers. It’s a clear, icy evening when a few dozen people from the village and neighbouring communes gather inside a large wooden shed on Hinterrhein’s outskirts. The promoters of Parc Adula have spent weeks visiting and lobbying the residents of the surrounding ...