French Wilderness at Stake in Alps Trekking War

High in the French Alps, above Nice and the southern ski resorts, an elderly shepherd is allowed to stay in the rubble ruins of an old army barracks while his sheep graze on the mountainside in the warmer months. An eagle floats regally above a nearby peak. This is the top of the Mercantour national park, a deserted mountainous area that is one of France's last patches of near wilderness - and so well kept a secre, that wolves have crossed over the nearby Italian border and started to breed again.

But its serene mix of peaks and lakes has now become the backdrop for a bitter row over rambling. Plans for a €20m (£16m) footpath and plush lodges, which would catapult the Mercantour from a little-known corner of the Alps to a beacon of international rambling "prestige", has sparked controversy. Local politicians and park leaders are scrambling to contain the trekking wars.

On one side is one of France's most debonair political figures, Christian Estrosi, a former motorbike champion. As well as being mayor of Nice, he is an MP and the head of the Alpes Martimes region. Dubbed "Sarko boy", Estrosi is a friend and political lieutenant of the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, and shares his belief that trendy policies and showbiz glitz are crucial. He swiftly appeared at Nice's main hospital to congratulate the actors Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie on the birth of their twins.

Having served twice as a minister alongside Sarkozy, Estrosi is determined to use his recent election in Nice to boost France's fifth biggest city. He knows that a city with one of the biggest urban votes for Sarkozy has sway among the national center-right ruling party.

So while his president is pushing a new green agenda, Estrosi has decided to not only plot Nice's battle to become France's greenest city, but to include the nearby mountains in his plans.

The Mercantour, which straddles the Italian border and is barely an hour and a half's drive from Nice, has the richest diversity of flora and fauna in France. His dream is to turn the French side of the park into a centre of "international prestige trekking" that would rival the Mont Blanc circuit. But he did not count on the outrage that the plans to renovate paths and build state-of-the-art accommodation for the 87-mile (140km) route would produce. An assorted group of walkers, mountain climbers, forest workers and Alpine bloggers have declared war, opening a debate on ramblers' obligations to the environment.

When work started in late summer on a new five-mile stretch of the path between two isolated lakes, local mountain lovers mobilized. Some trekked four hours into the mountains to protest, laying out their rucksacks to read "non". Then a group descended on Nice with banners, calling it a battle for the soul of the Alps. Now two local park workers have launched court proceedings over the destruction of examples of rare species of old maritime Alpine plants during what they called the brutality of building work using dynamite and diggers hauled in by helicopter.

"It's James Bond," said Vincent Kulesza, the forest ranger, as he stood at 2,000 metres surveying the landscape. "Politicians don't know what real nature is, they do everything too quickly, submitting the landscape to their caprice."

The regional government, keen to limit this image of ploughing through land, said the path will shrink back to 60cm to 80cm wide in a couple of years, and promised more consultation.

But with summer tourism in the mountains in decline, others wonder who will use the new route.

Laurence Roussol, of the non-profit group Mountain Wilderness, said it was vital the path did not just skim the top of the mountain as a high-altitude ramble, but dip into the valley villages to keep life going there. It shouldn't just be a "jewel for city people at the weekend".

The group is now in consultation on the plans but could get "radical" if they feel the environment is at risk, he said.

Eric Teisseire, an architect and regular mountain climber, said he feared "political ambition" had been "dumped on the back of the national park". He remembered the creation of the park in 1979, specifically to protect a slim strip of mountains from the concrete onslaught of ski-resort building. To go back on that and start putting economics before environment by commercializing the park would be "abhorrent", he said.

Pierre Commenville, a deputy director of the Mercantour national park, said the strength of opposition to the plans "shows how attached the people are to an area like this, how conscious people are of the mountains". He admitted that some plants from rare, protected species had been destroyed in the work this summer but said the environmental impact would be strictly monitored.

Others are hoping that if the plans follow proper environmental rules, there could be a rambling transformation. Pierre Schropff, an alpine guide, said: "It's an extraordinary idea that will make the mountain accessible not just to an elite of mountain climbers but to motivated ordinary tourists as well."