Regional Mountain Conference

National parks are central places to experience nature protection and cultural conservation. Nevertheless, values and imaginaries created by visiting national parks stretch far beyond a biodiversity and educational goal, for example, national identification. While the entanglement of national parks and nation-building has been extensively examined from an environmental historical perspective, this contribution demonstrates how this relationship can remain highly active and contested today through the day-to-day visitation of protected areas. Drawing on an illustrative case study of Triglav National Park, I explore how nature protection and cultural conservation are presented and experienced through everyday practices such as hiking, trail infrastructures, landscape protection, and the mobilization of myths and legends. These practices not only shape visitors’ encounters with “nature” but also reproduce and challenge narratives of national identity and belonging.

This shows how conservation in Alpine national parks continues to function as a key arena for more relational relationships, like ‘the national,’ while simultaneously influencing how nature itself is positioned—whether as pristine wilderness or as a socio-ecological system. These different understandings affect how people relate to conservation, its legitimacy, and its social implications. By foregrounding contemporary practices and experiences, this paper contributes to critical reflections on conservation as a culturally and politically embedded process and highlights the need to consider more relational approaches to Alpine conservation.