A bird’s-eye view of the upper Val Sinestra gives a fair idea of how remote Zuort really is.

The intact unity of fauna and flora still exists here: roe deer, red deer, ibex and chamois can all be observed with the appropriate patience and optics. Carefully designated game reserves and an ecological, balanced hunting concept characterise this biotope (campaign " Respect your borders").

The bearded vulture can be observed regularly from Zuort, often in pairs. What a sublime witness to the careful reparation of its extinction over a hundred years ago. On the mountain horizon, you can also experience the repeated wave flights of the golden eagle in spring: the male marks his territory - unmistakably for conspecifics. Or he circles a hundred metres above the chalet terrace during breakfast. In this thermal from the sunlit rock faces of the Val Sinestra, he disappears from the unarmed eye after minutes as a dot in the sky.

The forest is sublime and omnipresent. Its shady green pastures between the trunks make you pause and listen. Centuries-old mighty larches with their brown-red furrowed trunks symbolise today the importance of the naturally grown environment, touched by human hands with restraint at best.

Since Ötzi's time, this remote forest has been worked until a few years ago exclusively in the manner of thousand-year-old mountain agriculture, i.e. with simple tools and muscle power, and partly grazed. Trees were - still in Mengelberg's time - felled with restraint and one by one.

The term (climate) protection forest contains an important additional meaning: a standing, living tree absorbs carbon dioxide by means of photosynthesis - and produces oxygen in the process; thus it is the exact opposite of a combustion engine. The protective climatic function of the forest against negative, man-made emissions is not only qualitatively but also quantitatively important.