Skiers tell U.N. climate talks: "save our snows"

Several Polish skiers and snowboarders slid down a ramp covered by snow trucked in by the WWF environmental group and handed a petition to Polish Environment Minister Macjiec Nowicki in Poznan, hosting December 1-12 U.N. talks on a new climate treaty.

"Ice and snow are particularly vulnerable to the impacts of global warming, and as avid skiers and snowboarders we see our beloved sports endangered," about two dozen skiers said in the petition.

The skiers, whose sport is often criticized for damaging the environment in mountainous regions, said climate change meant milder winters and less snowfall from the Alps to the Andes, and from the Rocky Mountains to the Himalayas.

Signatories included U.S. Olympic and world Alpine ski champions Ted Ligety and Julia Mancuso along with Toni Innauer, an Austrian ski jumper who won Olympic gold in 1980, and Swiss Olympic gold medal snowboarder Tanja Frieden.

"These skiers need snow. We brought them some. Nature needs snow. These talks should do more to bring it," Kim Carstensen of WWF said.

He said the WWF trucked in about a ton of snow to Poznan, where the ground is bare.

The petition to the 187-nation talks urged a new global climate treaty, due to be agreed by the end of 2009, to limit a rise in world temperatures to less than 2 Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) since the Industrial Revolution.

Temperatures have already risen 0.7 Celsius and are projected to rise faster this century, largely because of a build-up of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.

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(Editing by Michael Roddy)