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Ibex All Around in the Passeiertal Valley

Ibexes climbing near the Bunker Mooseum in Passeiertal Valley

In the Passeiertal Valley you can see with your own eyes how powerful these proud animals are, with their meter-long horns – the ibex is curious but not shy. For this reason, ibexes had almost become extinct. Hardly any other wild animal of the high mountains has played such an important role in legend and folk medicine, local superstition and customs as the Alpine ibex.

The ibex is at home along rocky and sloping rock walls between 1,800 and 3,000 meters in altitude. Only with big luck one can spot them in the wild: unless you are standing at the Ibex enclosure in the mountain village of Moso/Moos in the Passeiertal Valley. Here, around the Bunker Mooseum in the Passeiertal Valley, a whole group of ibex have found their new home.

The Bunker Mooseum is located, as its name suggests, in a former bunker built in the 1940s by the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini as a possible safeguard against his German allies, but was never completed. Today, the museum is also known as the MuseumHinterPasseier,and at the same time serves as an info center for the Texelgruppe Nature Park and a modern interactive museum.

The ibexes happily balance along the steep rocks and proudly show off what unique climbing artists they are. Shy? Not at all! These majestic animals live next to the museum and are not disturbed by visitors. Many animals have been born and raised here. In recent years, every June they have borne offspring, and twice even twins. This is not only an exception for an enclosure, but also very rare in the wild. It is a sign that the animals feel particularly at home here.

What many visitors do not realize is that the ibex was almost eradicated already a hundred years ago, and could only recover thanks to protective measures. The last of their kind were living in the Italian Alps. Today, wild ibexes live the the Passeiertal Valley, and last year there was for the first a successful release of two animals from the enclosure into the wild – in cooperation with the Alpenzoo of Innsbruck.
If you want to get some great photo opportunities with these impressive animals, which are also the unofficial heraldic animal of the Texelgruppe Nature Park, you should take part in one of the ibex feeding events between July and September. The feeding site is highly visible – and if there is food, there will be a lot of ibex present as well.

The zookeeper provides information about this fascinating wildlife up close and personally. Did you know for example that ibexes live in packs, to which older males only join during the mating season? Or that the horns of the ibex grow for a lifetime?