The Tour du Valat is a private foundation working for the research and conservation of Mediterranean wetlands. Founded in 1954 by Dr Luc Hoffmann and based in the Camargue, it is at the cutting edge of multidisciplinary fields of research, building bridges between science, management and public policies, and drawing up management plans. The Tour du Valat has internationally recognized scientific expertise, and provides practical responses to problems regarding the conservation and sustainable management of natural resources. The Tour du Valat’s projects are carried out in the Camargue and around the Mediterranean Basin.

With its 2600-hectare estate, the Tour du Valat has laboratories, experimental field sites and offices surrounded by wetlands and various other Mediterranean habitats. It has developed a wide range of local, national, and international partnerships. The Tour du Valat research teams work in close collaboration with several national and international research centers, in particular the nearby universities and CNRS (national scientific research centers) of Montpellier and Marseille, the Edward Grey Institute (Oxford), and the Doñana Biological Station (CSIC, Sevilla).

Principal Investigator:

Brigitte Poulin, PhD, is a Community ecologist and Head of the Ecosystems Department at Tour du Valat. Scientific member of the steering committee of the Unesco MAB reserve in the Camargue. Involved in the scientific foundation of the IUCN red list of ecosystems and member of the DG-Environment project on the Establishment of a European Red List of Habitats (ENV.B.3/SER/2013/0025). Research activities in the Camargue focus on predictive modelling and transferring tools to improve ecosystem monitoring and management.
In Ecopotential she contributes to WP5, 6 and 12.