Transhumance in the Vicdessos

About 100km south of Toulouse in southern France, the E9 European trunk route passes through Tarascon sur Ariège on its way through the Pyrenees to Barcelona in neighbouring Spain. Tarascon is a kind of frontier town astride the river Ariège and surrounded by mountains. South-east from the town the Vicdessos valley climbs for 40km or so towards the 3000 metre high summit ridge which separates the two countries.

I pass this way in June to catch up with the spring movement of horses, cattle and sheep up to the mountain pastures. Known as the "transhumance", this will leave at around seven o’clock in the morning from the « Pla de l’Isard ». In the language of the region, Catalan, “Pla” is a plain or flat open area. “Isard” is the local Pyrenean name for the chamois, a European species of mountain goat. Livestock have been mustered here for centuries. It is the last flat place that we shall see today.

The sky is the colour of lead, the mountains cloaked in cloud, and my camera is already complaining about the light. It wants its flashgun. That is not the way to natural-looking photographs on a mountain. I debate with myself whether to continue the day’s shoot or simply give up and go home.

I was born to be in the mountains and I have come a long way today so I decide to stay with the transhumance until we reach the solid cloud layer above. Then at least honour will be satisfied and I can go home.

Exactly on time, the cattle leave first preceded by a classically red-faced farmer in a Citreon van who shouts at the spectators to keep out of their way. The narrow road follows the side of a gorge with a steep drop to one side. He fears that urban visitors will not anticipate the cows’ movements and will place themselves between the animals and the abyss. All it takes is one cow with a calf that have fallen behind the others and are trying to catch them up. One jostle with a tourist and it will all be over. It has happened before and there have been injuries but, so far, no deaths.

Next follow around twenty Mérens horses, a native Pyrenean breed. Today, silhouetted against the half-light of a dawn already two hours late, these jet-black horses will not make a story either. So it is all down to the sheep. I set off in front of several hundred ewes of the local tarasconnais breed.

Contrary to popular belief, sheep are anything but stupid. They know what they are doing even if it does not make immediate sense to some humans. They stick together because they know that this confuses predators. While it is true that this lot are protected by shepherds, sheep farming has only been around for a few thousand years. That is not very long in evolutionary terms. Better safe than sorry.

The flock ebbs and flows around me as the leaders fix on some approaching patch of grass. When they turn aside to snatch this pasture on the move, others will overtake and become the next front row. The browsers will rejoin the rear of the column as it passes. This cycle continuously repeats itself like waves breaking on a beach.

The sheep need to browse continually, not just for nourishment, but also for the moisture which the grass contains and carries on its surfaces. Climbing on a June day is hot work and dehydration is a risk. A couple of vans follow the flock, ready to collect any stragglers who find it all too much. There is usually the odd geriatric ewe or a lamb born too late in the season to make the whole trip on foot this time.

I notice that some sheep are wearing eye-catching red or yellow pompoms. Obviously this must have some profound cultural or religious significance. Ever keen to understand other people's lives and cultures, I ask a shepherd to explain the meaning of this historic and traditional custom. He stares at me, wide-eyed, trying hard to keep a straight face. He says “It seemed like a good idea - today is supposed to be fun. We just wanted to make them look pretty”. He even wears a few pompoms himself.

After such a silly question, he contains himself no longer and explodes into laughter. His colleagues follow suite five milliseconds later. I am confronted by a line of hysterical shepherds. Unfortunately we are all men and so cannot walk and laugh at the same time. The human vanguard shudders to a temporary halt.

Following are hundreds of woolly females that can walk and chew grass simultaneously. They don’t stop. . .

The flock reaches the cloud base where I had promised myself that I would turn back. Most of the spectators have long since returned from whence they came. But, I am having fun with my new-found friends so I continue and a strange things begin to happen.

As we climb through the mist, the light level improves rapidly and serious photography becomes an option. Then the white of the sheep’s fleeces melds with the grey mist to ghostly atmospheric effect. Images appear one after another telling the story and I am glad I stuck with it.

Three hours after leaving the Pla, the sheep suddenly stop at around 1800 metres. I ask a shepherd what is wrong - “Cows up ahead”. We have caught up the grey gascon cattle that began the day. A hundred metres ahead, the track has narrowed to single file. The cows search diligently for a way up through the rocks.

One of the shepherds runs forward, staff in hand, to direct the bovine traffic jam. He stands high on a boulder, complete with staff and beret. What a gift for a photographer! As this oil painting comes to life before my eyes, I run forward across the rock-strewn slope, hoping that he stays there long enough to be recorded for posterity. Obligingly he does. . .

Once past this little drama, it’s a short walk to a footbridge across the river Soulcem. The final destination, open mountainside, beckons on the other bank. The transhumance is complete. A shepherd will stay with the flock throughout the summer to make sure that all is well. They’ll descend again in October.

The transhumance

Since at least the Middle Ages, farmers have been taking their livestock to summer pasture high in the Pyrenees. Summer in Spain and southern France is hot and dry. Livestock would go thirsty without water being piped or brought to them. Once eaten, pasture won’t regenerate until the autumn rains. Animals suffer in the heat and are plagued by insects which flourish in the warm climate.

Photo: Tarasconnais ewes at the Port de Salau, Ariège

Many small lowland farms can’t support enough stock all year round to remain economic. For centuries the solution has been to head for the mountains. Topping out at over 3,000 meters, the Pyrenees provide a cooler climate, a tasty mix of grasses and other plants, streams which flow all summer and . . . freedom! Getting to these high pastures, called estives, means several days’ walk for animals and farmers alike. That’s the transhumance.

Until around 100 years ago, the transhumance revolved around dairy cattle. Sheep would be taken to higher pastures which cows couldn’t reach. Farming families decamped to the estives, where up to 14 people would spend the summer communally in each one-room stone hut. They made cheese on-site. Nothing was wasted; byproducts would be used to feed pigs which had also made the ascent with the sheep and cattle.

This way of life gradually declined during the twentieth century. Any village war memorial will testify that the First World War decimated a generation of young Frenchmen. The industrialisation of agriculture, rural depopulation and modern food regulations did the rest. These days, even farm-produced cheese comes from a sterile clean room.

Photo: Leaving Massat in the Couserans

Over the last decade transhumance has made a comeback. The mountains are seen as being increasingly important in the life of the countryside. They attract skiers and green tourism, providing opportunities for economic regeneration of rural areas while primary industries like textiles decline. You can’t outsource hill walking to China.

Transhumance is an important part of rural life both economically and socially. From a green point of view it is brilliantly efficient, reducing both agriculture’s carbon footprint and its energy consumption. The only fuel used is red and comes in bottles. These days the transhumance is organised communally by associations of local countryside users.
Photo: Crossing the river before finally reaching open mountain




The numbers are impressive - in the department of Ariège alone, over 12,000 cattle, 40,000 sheep and over 1,000 horses make this annual pilgrimage. The stock is cared for by professional shepherds and cowherds, employed for the season by the associations. But everyone joins in for the transhumance itself.

It’s even becoming a tourist attraction as anyone can join in, coming just for the day or combining it with a farm holiday.

And at the end of the journey there’s one hell of a party with local produce, wine from the region all serenaded by traditional musicians. . .

Photo: In the village of Biert the party gets going with a local band including the cornemuse, a pyrenean bagpipe.

One of our bears is missing. . .

There’s more news on the bears in the Pyrénées. Rumours continue to spread since spring that two of them have been killed by unknown members of the anti-bear fraternity. The Procureur of Ariège, an official similar to a public prosecutor or district attorney, has launched an enquiry to identify which bears are missing and to hear any witnesses.

Pyrenean locals remark that normally you can’t find a gendarme when you need one but suddenly they’re everywhere searching for missing bears. It’s true that the boys and girls in blue are more present on the ground and in the air, not to mention foresters, research scientists, mountain guides and conservation professionals.

They’re not looking for bears but a bear, called Boutxy. He’s not been seen since May. All the others are accounted for and believed to be in good health.

How do we know this? All the bears on the French side of the mountains have been deliberately released there after being captured in Slovenia. Each bear has a satellite transmitter implanted in its stomach cavity before being released and also wears a radio collar. The collar allows researchers to ensure that the release went well by tracking the bear through the forest using a hand-held receiver. It will automatically fall off after a year or so.

While the implanted transmitter is less accurate, it emits a satellite signal until its battery expires after about three years. After that it’s all down to pooh...the kind that you see on the ground, rather than the children’s character.

Before releasing a bear, scientists take a DNA sample which will be kept in a laboratory in Toulouse. Anyone finding bear traces, such as hair or droppings, can hand them in to the authorities. DNA analysis tells them which bear left the evidence. Looking at the state of decomposition of the droppings tells them when the sample was produced. One way or another they know which bear was where and when, except for Boutxy. . .

It’s true that Boutxy has been a prime suspect of attacks on sheep and that this may have provoked the more extreme members of the farming or hunting communities. So far, the procureur has summoned 30 people to give statements. Most have proved to be mere rumour and hearsay. That’s why the gendarmes are out looking for the body.

Anyone successfully prosecuted for deliberately killing a bear faces six months in prison and a heavy fine. The authorities inform hunters when a bear is present in their area. This was the case in 2004 when René Marqueze, a hunter, shot Canelle in 2004. She was the last native Pyrénéan bear.

Marqueze convinced the judge that he acted in self-defence and he was acquitted. So conservation organisations successfully sued him in the civil court for 10,000 Euros.

I wonder about that judge in the Marqueze case. . .

Photo: Canelle makes her last journey

Baloo the bear is alive and well and living in the Pyrenees…..probably

You remember Baloo, famed Disney buffoon and hero of the Jungle Book by Rudyard Kipling?

The Pyrenees are one of the last strongholds of the European brown bear in southern Europe. There are 22 of them at the last count and one of them is called in french, “Balou”, after the Kipling character. More of him later…

Brown bears originated in China around 600,000 years ago but only turned up in our mountains around 250,000 years ago. Every ice age the Bering Strait between Siberia and Alaska freezes and the sea level drops, allowing any adventurous bruin to simply amble across. The North American grizzly is the same species (Ursus arctos). So Balou and Yogi Bear are one and the same.

Strangely, Hollywood would have us believe that grizzlies are huge blood-crazed monsters which live on tourist sandwiches, deftly extracting sleeping bags complete with contents from their tents. I say “strangely” because their European cousins bottle and head off into the sunset at the slightest whiff of a human. I also have a BBC video, shot in Alaska, where David Attenborough calmly talks to camera while Yogi tears past him only to flop into the river after a lunchtime salmon. Surely some mistake.....

Here, tourist offices offer little cards advising hikers what to do on meeting a bear. Their hearing and sense of smell are spot-on but the sight’s not so good. You’re supposed to speak to bruin so that he knows that you’re there. When he rears up his hind legs, it’s to take a better look at you and have a good sniff. If bruin doesn’t like the smell of you, stand aside. Don't block his escape route or he may blunder into you by mistake on his way to the big adios.

It’s best not to get between baby bear and his mum. She won’t have a sense of humour.

In the Pyrenees the bear population steadily fell during the last century due to persecution. Our last native one, Canelle, was run over and killed three years ago. Our remaining 22 are re-introduced from Slovenia. Each one arrives in secret, outnumbered a hundredfold by a gendarmes escort. This re-introduction programme is controversial.

The national government says that bears are a native French species so there should be some. They’re doing the same for wolves and lynx. Some local communities are favourable and some not.

Many farmers are against the re-introduction, blaming bears for killing livestock. Bears are identified as the culprit in around 1% of the 50,000 sheep casualties. The rest die of natural causes, fall off cliffs or are preyed on by feral dogs.

Some also say that bears are intruders on man's territory and do not belong in the Pyrenees.The earliest human traces are cave paintings from 30,000 years ago, about 220,000 after bears arrived.

Then there are the hunters who are not supposed to run shoots where bears are present. The management team track the animals by radio and warn a hunting association when a bear is present in the locality. This voluntary cooperation has worked well until this year when Ariège hunters refused to continue. So the Préfet, the local representative of the national government, stopped the hunts altogether.

Last weekend, 7,000 hunters turned out to demonstrate on the streets of Foix, claiming that the Pyrenees had never been wild. Odd that the Neolithic cave paintings don’t show many motorways or housing estates.

Since the programme began, three introduced bears have been shot by “mistake”. This may be true since this number is dwarfed by the horses, farm livestock, dogs and cats slaughtered in error. On average French hunters shoot dead 33 of their own colleagues each year. It’s a privilege to see the mighty hand of evolution at work in this way.

Predation by bears in Ariège is half its normal level this year, prompting rumours that they’ve been mysteriously done to death in contract killings worthy of the mafia. It's more likely that they've had an easy year with unusually mild weather and so didn't need the extra mutton.

Bears put on fat during summer and autumn then spend the winter in hibernation. Largely nocturnal, they can cover 30km in a night, foraging for berries, grubs, vegetation and smaller animals.

Then there’s Balou. He likes.......wait for it.......honey. There’s none of the Winnie the Pooh, head stuck in the jar, nonsense with him. The Pyrenean flowers provide beekeepers with exquisite finely-scented honey. Oblivious to the clouds of pissed-off bees, Balou just pushes over the hives and helps himself.

He mostly lives in the Orlu valley in upper Ariège but he excelled himself in early 2009. In spring, a young bear’s thoughts turn to......nookie. He covered the 80km to Rennes les Bains in the neighbouring department of Aude in just three nights. Sadly, his quest was in vain since there are so few bears that it’s hard to meet another.

He gave up after two weeks and went home in disgust all the way back to Orlu. I can understand; it's like returning empty-handed from a young farmers' dance. I can only marvel at his powers of navigation, though.