Camargue - Human Influence

Human Influence

Humans have lived in the Camargue for millennia, greatly affecting it with drainage schemes, dykes, rice paddies and salt pans. Much of the outer Camargue has been drained for agricultural purposes. The Camargue has its own eponymous horse breed, the famous white Camarguais ridden by the gardians, who rear the region's fighting bulls for export to Spain, as well as sheep. Many of these animals are raised in semi-feral conditions within a Manade.

There are few towns of any size in the Camargue. Its "capital" is Arles, located at the extreme north of the delta where the Rhône forks into its two principal branches. The only other towns of note are Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, about 45 km to the southwest and the medieval fortress-town of Aigues-Mortes on the far western edge, in the Petite Camargue. Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer is the destination of the annual Roma pilgrimage for the veneration of Saint Sarah.

The Camargue was exploited in the Middle-Ages by Cistercian and Benedictine monks. In the 16th-17th centuries, big estates, known locally as mas, were founded by rich landlords from Arles. At the end of the 18th century, the Rhône was diked up. In 1858, the building of the digue à la mer (dyke to the sea) achieved protection of the delta from erosion. The north of the Camargue is made of agricultural land. The main crops are cereals, grapevine and rice. Near the seashore, prehistoric man started extracting salt, a practice that continues today. Salt was a source of wealth for the Cistercian "salt abbeys" of Ulmet, Franquevaux and Psalmody in the Middle Ages. Industrial salt collection started in the 19th century, and big chemical companies such as Péchiney and Solvay founded the 'mining' city of Salin-de-Giraud.

The boundaries of the Camargue are constantly revised by the Rhône as it transports huge quantities of mud downstream – as much as 20 million m³ annually. Some of the étangs are in fact the remnants of old arms and legs of the river. The general trend is for the coastline to move outwards. Aigues-Mortes, originally built as a port on the coast, is now some 5 km (3.1 mi) inland. The pace of change has been modified somewhat in recent years by man-made barriers, such as dams on the Rhône and sea dykes, but flooding remains a problem across the region.