Global warming: cacti invade the Swiss Alps

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Prickly pear cacti, which normally grow in hot and dry climates such as the Grand Canyon, are invading the Swiss Alps as a warning of global climate change.

“This invasive and non-native plant is not welcome in our area”, — announced by the municipality of Fulli as part of an uprooting campaign at the end of 2022.

Cacti have spread significantly in some Alpine regions of Switzerland and Italy.

Yann Tryponez, a biologist working for the conservation service Canton of Valais, said that “in some parts of the Valais, we estimate that cacti can occupy one-third of the available surface.”

Although these plants prefer hot climates, they can withstand temperatures as low as -15 Celsius , botanist Peter Oliver Baumgartner told The Guardian.

What they don't like, he said, is wet weather. in the Alps is falling rapidly. It is currently present about a month less than the average for the past six centuries, according to a recent study published in Nature Climate Change. Another study found that the number of days it snows th cover dipping below 2,600 feet above sea level has halved since 1970.

Rising temperatures in recent years have made life on the Swiss slopes more difficult, as evidenced by abandoned ski lifts and snowless slopes during high ski season.

In the summer of 2022, as a result of the melting of glaciers in the Swiss Alps, two groups of human remains were discovered, as well as the wreckage of a plane that crashed in 1968

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