Gran Paradiso

By 1945 the world population of the Alpine ibex had fallen to 416 animals, essentially all of them here. Every ibex in the Alps today descends from that stock, which survived because a king wanted the animals for himself: Vittorio Emanuele II declared these mountains a royal hunting reserve in 1856, King Vittorio Emanuele III donated 2,100 hectares to the state in 1919, and Italy’s first national park was established on December 3, 1922. The recovery after 1947 is credited to park administrator Renzo Videsott. The mountain itself rises 13,323 feet in the Graian Alps, the highest that stands entirely within Italy, a classic glacier climb ending at a summit statue of the Madonna.

This map shows a mountain wrapped in ice. The contour lines trace the glaciers flowing from the summit ridges toward Valsavarenche on the west and the Valnontey above Cogne on the east, where tight bands of lines record steep rock walls above the valley floor. Around the massif, the lines spread through high alpine terrain that lies entirely within the boundaries of the park.