Section 7 of 7
The Park
The Vanoise, its animals, and the measurements the park has kept since 1963.
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France's First National Park Took Forty Years to Agree
Conservation law reached the Vanoise only after a campaign stretching from the interwar years to 1963 — delayed by war, blocked by ski developers, and finally forced through by a coalition of naturalists, officials and climbers who had been building the case since the 1920s.
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The Park
The Ibex Count, Sixty Years On
From fewer than fifty animals to several thousand: the Vanoise census is the most precise long record of Alpine ibex recovery in France.
The Park
The Mer de Glace and Its Marked Losses
The Mer de Glace's retreat as a measured, documented record — the fixed survey points, the annual loss figures published by the CNRS Laboratoire de Glaciologie and the physical evidence visible from the Montenvers railway.
The Park
Balmat and Paccard, 8 August 1786
The first ascent of Mont Blanc settled one question about altitude and opened a longer argument about who deserved the credit.