• Since the passage of the storm Alex, in October 2020, 162 kilometers of hiking trails, out of the 550 marked out in the Mercantour park, have been damaged, and 10% (or approximately 61 km) are temporarily impassable and dangerous.

  • The park has announced the upcoming launch of an unprecedented sponsorship campaign to accelerate the reconstruction, while attendance is still expected to be very high this summer.

The site is colossal.

And it cannot be finished this year.

Ravaged by storm Alex last fall, many hiking trails will be impassable this summer in the Mercantour National Park, its management warned Thursday, announcing the upcoming launch of an unprecedented sponsorship campaign.

In total, 162 kilometers out of the 550 signposted have been affected, and 10% (approximately 61 km) are temporarily impassable and dangerous.

“We had to make trade-offs to start the first reconstruction work.

They are triggered gradually when the snowmelt allows it, ”explained Julie Molinier, head of the Awareness and enhancement of the territory service within the park.

More than ten times the usual annual budget

Priority was given to the restoration of the GR and the Grande Traversée du Mercantour, access to mountain huts and securing small loops for family hikes.

By the end of the year, 1.2 million euros will be devoted to these projects.

“And it's already huge.

This corresponds to more than ten times the usual annual maintenance budget, ”noted the director of Mercantour, Aline Comeau.

To restore all the affected sites in order, it will take three years of work and a total of 3.5 million euros, "more than all the amounts invested on the trails over the past sixteen years", specifies the park.

Hence the idea of ​​appealing to corporate sponsorship and crowdfunding for individuals, which will be open at the beginning of the summer on the KissKissBankBank platform.

Traffic jams in sight

In the meantime, with a number of passable trails cut, the situation leaves park officials fearful of new traffic jams for hikers, while the crowd promises, like last summer, to be very sustained.

"The number of people in the mountains had already increased by 30%," recalls the president of the Alpes-Maritimes department, Charles-Ange Ginésy, and history should repeat itself with the new deconfinement.

“We found ourselves in almost seaside situations in certain hotspots such as Lac d'Allos,” explains Julie Molinier.

And this situation calls into question the very vocation of the heart of a national park ”, particularly in terms of wildlife protection.

Very rich in the Mercantour, she has been especially accustomed, during these last months of confinement, to a certain tranquility which is likely to be disturbed.

"The park concentrates more than 40% of the species present in France in 0.4% of the territory", details Aline Comeau.

So in an attempt to manage the flow of visitors as well as possible, certain modifications have been launched to improve traffic on sites where frequentation should be high.

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  • Crowdfunding

  • Sponsorship

  • Nature

  • Hiking

  • Severe weather

  • Park

  • Storm

  • Flood

  • Nice

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