The Écopole du Forez

Preparing for a trip can be nearly as enjoyable as taking as it.  This time, with lots of arrangments to make beforehand, that was particularly true.  How many days would I take to cover the 800 km?  How long would each day's ride be?  Were there certain towns where I wanted to stay?  Which chambres d'hôte seemed best placed and most attractive?

I didn't, though, plan what I'd be doing in each place.  I'd stay there at least two nights, giving me a full day to explore.  But I had no plans for that day, apart from possibly looking for something related to the river.  Invariably the chambres d'hôte offer multiple brochures describing local attractions.  Usually, traveling with Lynda, we already have plans and I ignore the brochures, except to stuff them in a drawer to make room on the desk for my computer.  This time, though, I thought they might offer something.  That's how, while I was in Feurs for the first two nights of my trip, I learned about the Écopole du Forez.

It took France a while to recover from World War II.  Eventually it did and from the mid-1950s through the 1970s, the so-called trentes glorieuses, the economy took off and grew steadily.  Especially after the destruction from the War, the growth meant construction -- roads, rail lines, buildings, homes.  And construction meant sand and gravel, much of which came from river beds.  Over time, the environmental effects of this became more and more evident.  In places with heavy extraction stream levels went down, in turn affecting fish populations and upsetting plant and animal habitats along the banks.  

In the mid-1980s, environmentalists were trying to stop extraction of sand and gravel from pits along a stretch of the Loire in the middle of the Forez Valley.  The mining was lowering the river bed, which, in turn, was affecting fish populations and upsetting plant and animal habitats along the banks.  In 1987, the Fédération Rhône-Alpes de Protection de la Nature (FRAPNA) managed to find the funds to buy one of the gravel pits covering about 27 acres.  That same year, three companies with contiguous pits decided to donate to FRAPNA an additional 370 acres.  The Écopole's history is silent on what may have been going on in the background to cause this.  Now, with responsibility for nearly 400 acres, FRAPNA turned to the European Union for funds to restore the pits and surrounding areas.  La Nef ("The Vessel"), a wood and glass visitors center recalling an inverted ship's hull.  The building sits on pilings several feet above ground, both to provide a vantage point and to protect against Loire floods.

They also found resources to build

 The center opened in 1993.  Twenty years later you need the old photos on display there to know what the area was like before.  The old pits have become a series of ponds bordering the west side of the Loire.  Grasses and reeds cover the banks and black alders and willows have grown up on the land nearby.  The restored habitat has brought fish to the ponds and lots of birds, including cormorants, grey herons, black kites, egrets, and several varieties of ducks.  The upstream Grangent and downstream Villeret Dams eliminated beavers from the Forez Valley.  But Écopole staff successfully reintroduced the animal several years ago.

On a daily basis the Écopole concentrates on environmental education.  It has ties to universities in Lyon and Saint-Étienne.  It works with schools in the area.  And it hosts a regular flow of tourist like me.  It is also trying to extend the écopole concept up and down the river.  This year, at the end of May, during the celebration of the Écopole's 20-year anniversary, supporters designated the center as the first component of what they're calling the "Transligérienne."  "Ligérien" (feminin, ligérienne) describes someone or something related to the Loire River.  The term derives from the Latin name for the river, the Liger.  Supporters of the Transligérienne idea hope to see a series of similar natural preserves created all along the 1,000 km of the river.  Eventually, too, they hope to link to the Via Rhôna, a hiking, cycling trail along the Rhone River.  The dream is a line of nature preserves from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean.