Camargue
Delta

In a makeshift arena in the French coastal village Aigues-Mortes, young men in collared shirts come face-to-face with a raging bull. Surrounded by the city's medieval walls, the men dodge and duck the animal's charges to collective gasps from spectators. Part ritual, part spectacle, the tradition is woven into the culture of the country's southern wetlands, known as the Camargue.

For centuries, people from across the region have observed Camarguaise bull festivities in the Rhône delta, where the Rhône river and the Mediterranean Sea meet. But the tradition is under threat from rising sea levels, heatwaves and droughts which are making water sources salty and lands infertile, leaving bull-herders to rethink their livelihoods.

"Here in Camargue the bull is God, like a king," said Aigues-Mortes resident Jean-Pierre Grimaldi from the private arena stands, where he has watched competitions for decades. "We live to serve these animals. Some of the most brilliant bulls even have their own tombs built for them to be buried in."

Generations of manadiers, ranchers like Frédéric Raynaud in the Camargue just east of Aigues-Mortes, have dedicated their lives to raising the bulls indigenous to the region. Wilder bulls that can win prestigious fighting events are the most prized.

Raynaud, a fifth-generation manadier, has raised many such bulls on his manade, the term for ranches in the region. His operation currently looks after around 250 Camargue bulls and 15 horses in semi-wild pastures along the coast. But he fears that soon his much-celebrated cattle will not have land left to graze on.

"The sea level rises on our coast and takes more and more of our land," Raynaud said.

A temporary dyke built by local authorities to stop the growing sea has sunk in on itself. Water passes through it and into the manade's pastures. The edge of the ranch is slipping into the sea. Land that hasn't been swallowed is becoming unusable as encroaching seas make the wetlands increasingly salty.

"We used to have the salt rising up only on land nearer the coast," Raynaud said. "But now the salt rises up through the soil five or six kilometres beyond the shoreline, where you can see salt encrusting over the vegetation."

Heatwaves and drought, accelerated by climate change, are depriving the land of fresh water and allowing sea water to take over. The advance of salt up into the soil will leave the land barren and uninhabitable long before the sea engulfs it.

Some affected pastures have already become bare, with little vegetation available for animals to graze. The abnormally high salt content poses health risks to organisms not able to tolerate it. People have long been drawn to the Camargue because of the abundance of species and resources it contains, despite the challenges of living between the ebb and flow of an evolving delta. Its nutrient-rich wetlands sustain an enormous biodiversity, making it one of the most productive ecosystems in the world.

The Rhône has long served as the Camargue's lifeline, bringing fresh water from the Alps and dampening salt levels in the delta. As rain and snowfall decrease, it is becoming a less reliable source. Researchers estimate that the river's flow has reduced by 30 % in the last fifty years, and is expected only to worsen.

In summers plagued by high temperatures and diminished rainfall, sea water can rise up to twenty kilometres into the Rhône. During a heatwave in August 2022, the Raynaud family's pump in the Petit Rhône, an offshoot of the main river, began drawing salt water. They were forced to move the pump farther upstream, outside the perimeter of their own ranch, to irrigate their land and feed their animals.

The Raynauds recently bought ten hectares of land farther north, to be able to graze their bulls.

Manadier Jean-Claude Groul already grazes his animals across separated pastures, taking advantage of the different conditions each offers. At the crack of dawn he whistles as he walks through an open field, until a group of cotton-white Camargue horses heed his call and emerge from the fog. He loads them onto his truck and drives from one of his pastures to another he owns farther down the road.

Less and less territory is being prioritised for the ranches as authorities scramble to acquire land destined for preservation. Christine Aillet, the mayor of Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, has argued that statewide preservation efforts are putting nature over her townspeople.

"They tell you on TV that the Camargue needs to be renaturalised," said Aillet, who is sceptical of schemes aimed at saving the region by limiting global warming and reforesting the land. "If we renaturalise… the Camargue will leave us dry without fresh water."

Aillet favours measures such as increasing the number of tidal barriers along the coastline, which she says will help residents. Researchers say such ideas are only a temporary fix and won't withstand the effects of coastal erosion in a fast-altering climate.

Scientists in the region say the Camargue risks losing both its economic and cultural worth, as well as its natural beauty, if interventions aren't taken to curb climate change. Top climate experts say sea levels will continue to rise and that drastic action is needed to stop making the problem worse.