gdri-ehede

Visit of the Sichuan administration of forestry and grassland at the MNHN, Paris

Patrick Giraudoux — 2026-04-29T06:29:47Z

Cécile Callou, MNHN, and Patrick Giraudoux, UMLP & LSNU, foreign director of the WiMEH, received a delegation of the Sichuan Administration of Forest and Grassland and showed them the collections of the National Museum of Natural History (MNHN).

The delegation was composed of Cheng Zongqian, deputy-director ; Li Xiang, inspector, Office of the Institutional Organization Commission, CPC ; Chen Jing, director, Han Delong, Secretary of the communist party, Siguniang (四姑娘) National Nature Reserve ; Yang Jiancuo, Liaison officier, Siguniang National Nature Reserve.

The workings of the MNHN and the history of its collections (over 68 million specimens) were presented including the holotype of the Giant Panda, and prospects for collaboration with the Sino-French laboratory of Wildlife Management and Ecosystem Health (WiMEH), Leshan Normal University, were discussed.

Spring Mission in Muchuan (沐川县)

Patrick Giraudoux — 2026-04-19T07:17:13Z

LWMEH participants: Profs. Li Li and Simon Calla, with Tang HeiXia an Qin Fubing

April 12–14: Lecture series

The first part of the trip was devoted to a series of lectures. The first took place at the Chinese Consulate in Chengdu, at the invitation of Samuel Liegeois, the attaché for academic and scientific cooperation. This provided an opportunity to present the work conducted in France on fostering cooperation between hunters, environmentalists, farmers and scientists to an audience of around thirty people and address the controversy surrounding the fox's status (see CARELI program).

A second lecture was held at the Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The presentation of “A socio-anthropological perspective on human-wildlife conflicts” to fellow biologists and ecologists aimed to promote the interdisciplinary approach developped within the WiMEH and to forge bridges between these two institutions. The following day, the same lecture was delivered to first-year biology and ecology students at Leshan Normal University.

April 14–17: Preparations for upcoming work

This mission also provided an opportunity to continue the exploratory fieldwork that began last October. Various meetings with residents and local authorities in Muchuan county (沐川县) revealed that conducting research in this area offers different practical and scientific challenges (situations of conflict and coexistence between humans and macaques, Macaca mulatta, within the same territory; effects of landscape transformation on agriculture and tourism; intersection of environmental justice and biodiversity conservation issues; etc.).

The morning before Simon Calla's departure was devoted to discussions regarding the launch of a research project beginning in September 2026. It will bring together French and Chinese faculty members from WiMEH and involve students from Leshan Normal University.

Spring Mission at Baoxing (宝兴县) and HeiZhuGou (黑竹沟)

Patrick Giraudoux — 2026-04-11T08:00:28Z

LWMEH participants: Profs. Li Li and Patrick Giraudoux, with Tang HeiXia

24-26 March : Accompanied by Mr Xue Kang (薛康), initial contact with the authorities in Ya'an (雅安) and a visit to the BiFengXia (碧峰峡) Chinese Giant Panda Research and Conservation Centre, where 73 pandas are kept, followed by a visit to Muping (穆坪), the place where Armand David (1826–1900) lived and where he introduced a large number of species to science, including the giant panda and the golden monkey, Rhinopithecus roxellana. A collaboration between the LWMEH and the county is being planned.

27 March : lecture at the Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences : "Biodiversity, water, food, health, climate: everything is connected. The IPBES Nexus Assessment."

30 March : lecture at the Leshan Normal University : "Conservation of the Black-and-White snub-nosed monkey, ecotourism and Museums : what are the challenges?"

30 March - 2 april : Guided by Mr Zhu Quan (朱荃), a visit to the HeiZhuGou Nature Reserve in Ebian Yi Autonomous County, where the giant panda population is estimated at 53, and red panda and leopard are still present. Meeting with the local authorities and exchanges about future collaborations between the reserve and the WiMEH.

3 April :

Meeting with Mr Sun Qian (孙前) in Chengdu, author of several books on the life of Armand David
Meeting with Wen Hao and his team, from Xinjiang Medical University, in preparation for the June mission

From Mount Emei to Besançon: Leshan Normal University visits UMLP

Patrick Giraudoux — 2025-09-27T06:22:06Z

27 septembre 2029

The Sino-French laboratory Wildlife Management and Ecosystem Health (WiMEH), which was established in Kunming, Yunnan, in 2012, was transferred to Leshan Normal University, Sichuan in 2023. This represents both the outcome of over 13 years of collaborative work and new perspectives for conservation ecology. New research into Tibetan macaques and wildlife tourism has begun on Mount Emei.

From 25 to 26 September, a delegation from Leshan Normal University, led by General Secretary Liu Jin and including General Secretary of the School of Life Sciences Yang Yi, Director of the Bamboo Forestry Technology Innovation Institute and Lab of Bamboo Disease Prevention and Resource Development Yang Yaojun, Director/Professor of the Department of Information Technology and Experimental Support Liu Caiming, Director/Professor of WiMEH Li Li, and Former President of the Federation of Chinese Students and Scholars in France and External Affairs Coordinator of WiMEH Zhang Yijiang, visited the University Marie and Louis Pasteur.

On the first day, the delegation discovered the Chrono-Environnement laboratory and the teaching facilities of the Faculty of Sciences and Techniques. The delegation was welcomed by the lab's director, Émilie Gauthier, who was joined by Eve Afonso, Patrick Giraudoux, Frédéric Gimbert, Hugo Sentenac and Estelle Franc.

The international Master EMME (Ecology, Monitoring and Management of Ecosystems) of the UMLP was also presented by Francis Raoul, its director.

On the second day, a visit to the Centre de Linguistique Appliquée (CLA) was organised, where we met its director Lucas Levien, Lucie Guy and Florian Chapey. Opportunities to study French and Chinese were presented.

A meeting was then held with Hugues Daussy, the President of the University Marie and Louis Pasteur, at the President's Building, where we met the vice-president of the international outreach, Samir Jemei, the director of European international relations and Francophonie, Marieke Steenbergen, and the International Cooperation Officer (Asia, Africa, Oceania) Nouhaïla El Aouad. The two universities signed an agreement of cooperation on this occasion.

The teams will meet again in about ten days in Leshan, China, for field work and the Sino-French conference on One Health and Conservation.

Sino-French conference One Health and conservation: meeting the challenge

Patrick Giraudoux — 2025-09-11T06:42:55Z

The Sino-French laboratory of wildlife management and ecosystem health (WiMEH) organises a conference on One Health and conservation in Leshan from October 12 to 15.

The world faces interlinked and mutually reinforcing crises of biodiversity loss, water and food insecurity, health and climate change. The IPBES Nexus Assessment has provided evidence that addressing them in separate silos is ineffective and counterproductive. One Health is a framework jointly endorsed by the World Health Organization, the World Organisation for Animal Health, the Food and Agriculture Organization and the United Nations Environment Programme. It affirms the nexus between human, animal, plant and ecosystem health.

Close to Mt Emei National Reserve at the Leshan Normal University, the conference will gather world specialists to address how solutions to biological conservation issues are necessarily nexus-based and how the One Health framework is relevant to breaking down siloed thinking and finding co-benefits in promoting the protection of biodiversity and the health of people, animals, plants and ecosystems.

Clic on the panel below to get pictures of the conference


Programme

Contact: Professor Li Li (李丽)， WiMEH， Leshan Normal University, China

See also:

Professor Li Li's visit at Chrono-environnement, Besançon

Patrick Giraudoux — 2024-07-12T06:59:05Z

The exchanges in person have been interrupted for more than 4 years by the COVID19 pandemic, although cooperation continued via mails and visioconferences. Meanwhile, the Laboratory of Wildlife Management and Ecosystem Health has moved from YUFE, Kunming, Yunnan to Leshan Normal University, Sichuan, with new study fields added to the GDRI EHEDE network (see e.g. Tibetan Macaque on Mont Emei).

Professor Li Li was in Besançon from June 22 to July 7 to prepare the visit of a high-level delegation from Leshan Normal University to Besançon, at University of Franche-Comté, possibly in December 2024, the signing of a memorandum of understanding between the two universities, and to discuss current and future research programmes with Chrono-environment researchers.

It was also an opportunity to visit some landscapes of Franche-Comté and the Vosges, including Arbois, where Louis Pasteur carried out some of his research in his family home and to meet former doctoral students with whom Li Li worked during her sabbatical in Besançon in 2011-2012.

Post-COVID, missions to China resume

Patrick Giraudoux — 2023-12-09T12:46:12Z

Although cooperation continued through video conferencing and e-mail, travel to and from China and meetings in person were suspended for four years during COVID-19. From 6 to 17 November, a first mission was organised to take stock of the changes that have taken place in France and China since COVID and reorganize common works. Prof. Li Li (李丽) managed the content of this mission. Participants for the Chrono-environment lab were Eve Afonso and Patrick Giraudoux

Leshan Normal University

Prof Li Li, who has recently been appointed to Leshan Normal University, will relocate the Laboratory of Wildlife Management and Ecosystem Health, which was initially established at Yunnan University of Finance and Economics in 2012. The conditions under which this can be supported by our international network and how to foster future collaborations between Leshan Normal University and the University of Franche-Comté were discussed with the staff of the Leshan Normal University, President Liu Jing (刘进), Vice-president Jiang Tao (江瑫), Prof. Tang Mei (唐梅) Dean of the School of Life Science, Prof. Liu HongJiang (刘洪江) Vice-dean of the School of Tourism and Dir. of human resources Huang Kai (黄凯).

Mount Emei (峨嵋山)

Welcomed by dir. Tang YongJin (汤永进), Emei Mountain and the China terrestrial ecosystem research station were visited with a view to extending ongoing research in Yunnan on black-and-white snub-nosed monkeys and the impact of wildlife tourism to Tibetan macaque populations.

Xishuangbanna National Nature Reserve

Dir Yang Yun (杨云) organized a warm welcome and the visit of several field stations:

the elephant valley, where the situation observed by the GDRI EHEDE before COVID19 was updated
Guan Ping (关评) long-term research station on Asian wild elephant, where in depth discussions were held with technical staff
an organic tea plantation under tree cover at NanNuo (南糯)

Conferences

Several presentations were given at each site on the work being done on the snub-nosed monkeys in Yunnan, and on the concept of One Health and its biodiversity component.

Conference organised by the French consulate in Chengdu on the 18th of March 2024

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Towards an objective definition of optimal habitat for small mammal species

Patrick Giraudoux — 2023-08-17T20:09:19Z

How to define objectively the optimal habitat of small mammal species ? This is the question addressed in an article published in PLoS One by researchers from the French-British-Chinese network, which began working together in 1994.

Marston, C., Raoul, F., Rowland, C., Quéré, J.-P., Feng, X., Lin, R., Giraudoux, P., 2023. Mapping small mammal optimal habitats using satellite-derived proxy variables and species distribution models. PLOS ONE 18, e0289209.

Small mammals play an important role in terrestrial ecosystems, dispersing seeds, modifying soil structure and vegetation composition. They are also the prey of many predators, and are therefore often keystone species in these communities. Some species undergo population peaks (outbreaks), which can have a major impact on agricultural production and the transmission of pathogens (see e.g. Arvicola terrestris in the Jura massif).

It has been shown that those population peaks are more likely in landscape with larger proportion of favourable habitat, also named 'optimal habitat', in a landscape. To predict outbreaks and the risks associated with them, it is therefore essential to be able to objectively define the optimal habitat for each species of concern. There are a number of methodological difficulties with this definition. When long-term studies cannot be carried out (emergency, lack of funding, etc.), data are based on snapshot sampling. Thus, multi-annual variations in abundance (cyclic or not) may lead to find that a species is absent from its optimal habitat (e.g. during a phase of low density), and conversely, during population peaks, the presence of a species may be observed in unfavourable habitats, due to the spillover of populations from genuinely favourable habitats. As a result, the optimal habitat for each species is more often than not defined by 'expert opinion', which can be a source of subjectivity.

The aim of this study is to use measurements derived from satellite data to define the optimal habitats for species sampled by heterogeneous means (specific traps, index transects), which is often required by field constraints. Satellite data quantifying the characteristics and dynamics of the landscape according to their spatial and temporal variations in reflectance (particularly seasonal) were obtained from GoogleEarth. The data on small mammals were obtained in the Narati area, Tian Shan, China, in September 2006 and in the Sary Mogul area, Kyrgyzstan, in September 2014 during sampling campaigns carried out as part of a French-Sino-British cooperation funded by the US Institutes of Public Health and the Wellcome trust. Statistically significant satellite variables were selected using the "boruta" algorithm, and their association with the distribution of various small mammal species was modelled using "random forests".

Although this approach does not completely overcome all the possible biases mentioned above, it does define optimal habitat by a combination of dynamic landscape variables accessible from satellites. This means that we can move from a definition of optimal habitat based on "expert opinion" to one based on objective measurement of the distribution of small mammal species themselves. The study shows that there are significant differences between the two types of estimation.

Contacts:

Patrick Giraudoux, professor emeritus of ecology, Chrono-environment, France
Christopher Marston, Ecological Remote Sensing Specialist at UK Center for Ecology and Hydrology, Lancaster, UK.

Thinking the pandemic...

Patrick Giraudoux — 2020-05-06T09:25:06Z

Several research teams from the Bourgogne Franche-Comté universities have gathered to organize an online interdisciplinary seminar to reflect upon the current pandemic. Each session will also be available on a dedicated youtube channel.

The pandemic as we know it in 2020 is a total phenomenon: none of our sciences can take the measure of it on its own. Its many dimensions require all our various sciences, from the ecological context of propagation to the epidemiology of human populations and the research of a cure, from organizational and public health challenges to the assessment of social and psychological effects, for instance of massive confinement of populations, up to political, ecological, economical, informational and ethical stakes of the world as it is now. Viruses cross the boundaries of sciences, whether social, medical or of nature. They bring societies back into the socio-ecological network through which they diffuse. The new world this pandemic is bringing out will need a deeper integration of our sciences, require our capacity to frame common questions across disciplines.

Those seminars (in French) are a platform to help experts from these various sciences and disciplines create a common ground for action. All sessions are broadcasted online. The programme is here : https://mshe.univ-fcomte.fr/la-mshe/actualites/975-penser-la-pandemie.

Write to the contacts to participate live.

Podcasts on Youtube

Podcasts on Canal U

Contacts:

Arnaud Macé, professor of philosophy
Patrick Giraudoux, professor emeritus of ecology

Autumn meeting days, ShenZhen, Beijing

Patrick Giraudoux — 2019-11-07T07:12:50Z

First World Forum on Nature Conservation, ShenZhen, China 30.10-1.11

The aim of the meeting was to foster domestic and international exchange of views about Natural Reserves and protected area management in China. It was the first meeting organized by the National Forest and Grassland administration of China (NFGA), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the People's Government of Guandong Province, with the support of the ShenZhen Municipal People's government. The CNOOC foundation, China Wildlife Conservation and China Green foundation were also co-organizers of this event.

Two IRN EHEDE members were invited and gave a presentation:

Eve Afonso	Can wildlife conservation and ecotourism be conciliated? Lessons from Yunnan Snub-Nosed monkeys
Patrick Giraudoux	Wildlife monitoring in socio-ecosystems: lessons from the LTSER area Arc jurassien and the IRN EHEDE

They also participated to two side meetings:

Sino-French Bilateral Workshop on the Cooperation in the Field of Nature Conservation, organized by the Agence française de la biodiversité, AFB, and the NFGA: the aim was to exchange views about potential collaborations between Chinese and French Natural Reserves and Parks. The Chinese and French delegates were led by Zhou ZhiHua, Deputy director general of the Natural Protected Area Management office of the NFGA and Cyrille Barnerias, head of the European and International office of the AFB.
Gaoligongshan National Park management scheme evaluation, as part of an external international expert panel (Australia, France, USA).

French-Chinese scientific seminar Environment and Biodiversity, Beijing, November 4-5

A French-Chinese symposium was hold under the umbrella of the French-Chinese Commmission Mixte Science et Technologie, during the State Visit of President Macron in China. It was organized by the Ministry of Science and Technology of China, and by the Ministry of Research and Higher Education, the CNRS and the French Embassy in China for France. The aim was to exchange about issues that will be developed at the next IUCN World Conservation Congress in Marseille (June 11-19, 2010) and the COP15 in Kunming (October 5-10, 2020). It covered three topics: Biodiversity and Global Change, Critical Zone, Soil Functionning, and Ecohealth. The CNRS bulletin n°30 with all the presentations is downloadable here (in French).

GDRI members presented three talks as examples of sino-french cooperation:

Patrick Giraudoux and Li Li for the GDRI EHEDE	Ecosystem health and environmental disease ecology: 25 years of Sino-French cooperation Talk summary PG	Article in the CNRS Bulletin n°30
Eve Afonso and Li Li for the GDRI EHEDE	Can wildlife conservation and ecotourism be conciliated? Lessons from Yunnan Snub-Nosed monkeys Talk summary EA	Article in the CNRS Bulletin n°30
Cécile Callou	The central role of Museum collections Talk summary CC	Article in the CNRS Bulletin n°30

Furthermore, part of Dominique Joly's presentation about CNRS infrastructures and the role of the Zones ateliers was based on GDRI works on wild Asian elephants human conflicts.


Dominique Joly's article in the CNRS bulletin n°30

Side conversations permit informal dialogue with Dominique Joly, CNRS-INEE vice-director in charge of large research infrastructures, Philippe Arnaud, the new director of the CNRS bureau in Beijing, and Philippe Grieu, Scientific Attaché of the French Embassy.