Gavarnie, la Maison du Parc National des Pyrénées

It is Friday morning (my blog was abandoned during the Easter weekend, which we spent with our families, and I confess I felt like doing nothing, and just visiting with my mother and my sister Odile and her children!). We are at Gavarnie, at la Maison du Parc National des Pyrénées, where we see a very interesting film about the Parc National and the role it, and the gardes forestiers have to play in the Vallée des Toys, la vallée de Gavarnie-Luz.
The gardes, who are in some ways similar to rangers, have three principal tasks in the Parc: policing, maintaining, and communicating. They police by making sure the rules of the Parcs Nationaux are upheld by all the visitors, they maintain by working on the infrastructure of the Parc, but also by cataloging, making inventory of the flora and fauna of the Parc, which helps them preserve the balance in the eco-system of the Parc, and they communicate by giving specific tours of the Parc according to the seasons and what the groups wish to experience, by teaching classes and working with visitors and all the local schools.
We were amazed to see that the gardes really are scientists, each with specific missions in the Parc, and that they take notes and make reports which are then sent to the central command in Tarbes. They are complete athletes who are mountain-climbing to reach difficult areas where they need to count an endangered species of flowers noticed growing high on a cliff, or skiing to reach an indigenous species of bird and observe them nesting etc...The local collège (middle school) has a programme which sends students to work with the gardes for a few weeks.
After this programme très intéressant, we have a pique-nique in a meadow near Gavarnie's church. In the cemetery near the church are buried or honored with a plaque all the most famous mountain climbers of the Pyrénées, who are called Pyrénéistes, and not Alpinistes!