Pastoralism in the Pyrenees: “Living with the living means living with uncertainty, the bear is the standard-bearer of this idea”

Six million photos, two hundred hours of observation, the scientific project led in Ariège by CNRS researcher Ruppert Vimal has multiplied the data. Its ultra-local prism questions the consideration of the realities on the ground by the different administrative levels.

R uppert Vimal is ultra-local. This forty-year-old CNRS research fellow has been exploring the vast subject of "the coexistence between pastoralism and bears" since 2019, using the equivalent of a microscope. The study he conducted with engineer Manon Culos and doctoral student Alice Ouvrier focused on three summer pastures in Ariège and involved numerous volunteers, technicians, engineers, and researchers.

At the intersection of social and natural sciences, the project compiled extensive data, the result of interviews, with nearly two hundred hours of observation and up to six million manually identified camera trap images. This was painstaking work, both deliberate and rigorous, "to highlight the complexity of what's happening on the ground," explains the ecological geographer.

For more than three years, the project, partly led by the Toulouse laboratory Géode, has focused on "the diversity of coexistence situations", before questioning its consideration in the "global debate". Each territory follows its own direction. "It's an illusion to believe that we'll reach a stable state, a climax," the researcher says. "Evolution is constant; pastoral groups, breeders, sheep, guard dogs, bears change, and so do the mountains."

The plantigrade, according to the observation of the photo traps, appeared 455 times on the three summer pastures targeted by the study

The uniqueness of each situation, undeniably linked to that of the local stakeholders, did not surprise the scientific team led by Ruppert Vimal. No surprise for the researcher, who was nonetheless astonished by the unpredictable nature of the highly nocturnal plantigrade, which, according to the (underestimated) observation of camera traps, appeared 455 times in the three summer pastures covered by the study (without systematic attacks).

"Before this project, we were unable to say where the bears go, how many, if it changes from one year to the next... Here, we show that, from one summer pasture to another, from one season to another but also within the same summer pasture and the same season, we have a very strong spatial and temporal variability. So, if we can say 'yes, but some parts of the summer pasture are more frequented than others', it remains overall very random. Living with the living is living with uncertainty, the bear is the standard-bearer of this idea."

The summer pastures, a small portion of the territory of the animal "with opportunistic behavior" , are the scene of a few interactions with humans. They have an endemic and unique character, gathered during the interviews conducted by the team of scientists. In Ariège as elsewhere in the Pyrenees, the trauma of an encounter, the fear of a charge or the sight of sheep being torn to pieces are mixed with admiration for the largest predator in Europe and "its beauty".

"Western societies always talk about this need to reconnect with nature, with living things, and if there's one category of people who do this on a daily basis, it's farmers and shepherds," argues Ruppert Vimal. "They're capable of recognizing certain behaviors, they make hypotheses. Their knowledge is invaluable for research on coexistence with bears."

Still active on one of the three summer pastures, the study calls for a follow-up, relating to interactions between humans and the bear. "How do these realities of the territory exist at a higher level," asks Ruppert Vimal, "how are they transformed as we move up the administrative organizational ladder, particularly at European level? Don't all these maps, these indicators that we create at the national or international level, create a form of diversity and a challenge of protecting diversity that are disconnected from the reality on the ground?" While clinging to the Pyrenees, the scientist will have to distance himself from them.