Italian Dolomites Seek to Ban Heli-Skiing and Helicopter-Assisted Wingsuit Jumping

A regional lawmaker in Veneto is calling for sweeping measures to curb heliskiing and helicopter-assisted wingsuit jumping in the Italian Dolomites, arguing that the practices are unsafe, environmentally damaging, and serve only the interests of a few wealthy thrill seekers.

Renzo Masolo, a councillor with the Green-Left Alliance (Alleanza Verdi e Sinistra), said this week that fines have failed to deter operators and clients who pay to access remote slopes by helicopter or jump in wingsuits from helicopters. Instead, he urged regulators to adopt harsher penalties, including suspending pilot licenses and seizing aircraft. The initiative is also supported by the Italian Alpine Club.

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The debate surfaced during a session of the regional council’s Second Commission, which reviewed the annual report on the Dolomiti d’Ampezzo Natural Park. Masolo pointed to heliskiing and wingsuit jumping as activities “extremely dangerous” both for participants and for others in the backcountry and that “have nothing to do with the mountain and its culture.” Masolo also pointed out that helicopters can trigger avalanches that put other backcountry skiers at risk.

Beyond safety concerns, Masolo argued that helicopter use in the protected area undermines the park’s mandate. The Dolomiti d’Ampezzo Natural Park is a designated no-fly zone, but enforcement has been limited. “Noise, pollution, and disturbance of wildlife” are all consequences of aircraft traffic, he said. The councillor stressed that current measures are often ineffective: “For a small number of very wealthy clients, fines are simply the cost of doing business.” He praised the park authority for working with Italy’s civil aviation agency, ENAC, to bolster enforcement and push for stronger tools.

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Masolo concluded by warning that the region’s priorities should focus on preserving the Dolomites as a “natural heritage to be respected,” not a ‘playground’ for extreme sports.

When Masolo asked this month for “more incisive sanctions and strengthened controls” to stop heliskiing and helicopter-enabled wingsuit-jumping in the Ampezzo Dolomites, he was tapping a longstanding controversy that dates back more than a decade. Environmental groups scored a tangible victory on the Marmolada a decade ago, when a 2011 agreement limited permitted helicopter landings on the mountain after years of activism—a moment widely cited by conservationists as proof that targeted constraints can work. More campaigns are still ongoing to ban heliskiing in the entire Dolomiti mountain range.

Since then Italy has not produced a single, comprehensive national law banning heliski. Instead, regions and autonomous provinces have taken divergent approaches. The Autonomous Provinces of Trento and Bolzano and the Aosta Valley have long-standing regional rules restricting heliskiing; Piedmont (Piemonte) updated its regional framework in recent years to regulate mountain sports and the discipline of flights in mountain zones, specifying where and when eliski can occur and spurring intense local debate. That patchwork leaves large parts of the Dolomites regulated differently depending on which side of an administrative border a slope falls.

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Dolomiti UNESCO’s participatory “Dolomiti 2040” process—a strategy intended to guide management of the World Heritage Site—explicitly flagged “heli-tourism” among the urgent threats to the area’s biodiversity, and some stakeholders recommended a generalized ban within the UNESCO site. But turning those recommendations into binding, cross-jurisdictional rules requires political coordination among regions, autonomous provinces and national agencies—a heavy task for Italy. 

A comprehensive ban on heliskiing across the Dolomites would require one of three possible routes, each with trade-offs:

1) Regional or provincial bans, coordinated across territories. Because parks and much mountain-land governance fall under regional competence, Veneto, Trentino, South Tyrol and other regions or autonomous provinces could each adopt strict prohibitions that would cover the parts of the Dolomites in their jurisdiction. Piedmont’s 2021–2022 law shows how a region can legislate activity and flight discipline in mountain zones; but unless neighbouring regions do the same, operators can shift departure points across borders. 

2) Park-by-park strict enforcement. Individual parks (like the Parco delle Dolomiti d’Ampezzo) can and do bar heliskiing within their perimeters and impose fines. Strengthening those rules, increasing monitoring, investing in on-the-ground patrols and using judicial tools to seize aircraft could curtail illicit flights—but only where park boundaries align with the slopes that matter.

3) National legislation or aviation regulation. A national law or a binding ENAC regulation could harmonize rules across regions, restrict commercial helicopter landings for tourism purposes, or create uniform permit requirements and sanctions (including licence revocation). That would be the most durable solution, but it requires national political agreement—historically hard to achieve given industry lobbying and regional sensitivities. ENAC already has power to suspend and revoke aviation approvals; aligning ENAC enforcement policy, judicial cooperation and regional administrative rules could approximate a nationwide ban in practice.

Meanwhile, operators in the Dolomiti region argue that heliskiing is a legitimate high-end tourism product and a local revenue source; hotels and transport providers in some communities fear economic fallout from a ban. That controversy around heliskiing and helicopter-assisted wingsuit-jumping has now come back into the spotlight as the region will be hosting the 2026 Winter Olympics, and as civil-society groups press the Dolomiti 2040 management plan to be put into force. Any effective ban will depend on inter-agency coordination—between parks, ENAC, local police and finance/military police—and on judicial willingness to issue asset seizures and pursue criminal or administrative sanctions. Something that could be difficult to achieve while under the global spotlight.