They march 20 km a day to protest against the use of pesticides. Joseph Garrigue, former curator of the nature reserve of the forest of La Massane, on the heights of the Albères, and his partner Françoise Taine intend to join the Natural History Museum in Paris in about forty days. Escorted by nearly 300 people, they started this long advance on Saturday 13 January from the mouth of the Racou in Argelès-sur-Mer (Pyrénées-Orientales).
"We're all in this together"
"Pesticides, which are still widely used today, have invaded the entire planet. Residues are present in the atmosphere and end up polluting plants thousands of kilometres away. Including in our primary forest of Massane, which has been abandoned for vegetation and logging since the end of the nineteenth century. We discovered that in the atmosphere we encounter almost as many microplastics as in the city of Perpignan. We had the idea of analysing the natural drinking troughs of the forest inhabitants that exist in the hollows of the trees and we were surprised to discover the high levels of mercury, arsenic and chlorine in these small water reserves," explains Joseph Garrigue, the initiator with researcher Francis Hallé, of this call from the forest.
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"We're all in this together. I mean all of them. Even the penguins in the cluster are now contaminated by pesticides and there are deformities," the ecologist continues. To spread the news and raise the alarm, Joseph Garrigue and Françoise Taine will walk 900 km, first along the Mediterranean (between Torreilles and Grau de Leucate on Monday 15 January) before heading to Montpellier on 21 January for an evening conference with Francis Hallé.
In this long walk, behind a stroller for the symbol, the two ecologists are accompanied by activists and friends who take turns on the green paths and side roads in order to mobilize in the Rhône Valley and then in Burgundy while waiting to join the Parisian Natural History Museum.