Paper short abstract:

We present the goals and specificities of the biodiversity inventory carried out in the Mercantour national park (France) since 2005. We show that it developed at the interface of systematics, ecology and nature management, highlighting how they can enrich, as well as compete with, one another.

Paper long abstract:

Our intervention will deal with the biodiversity inventory carried out in the Mercantour national park (France) since 2005. Based on a field survey, it will present the goals and implementation modalities of this inventory and will compare it to other similar endeavours undertaken elsewhere in the world, so as identify its specificities. We shall see that the Mercantour biodiversity inventory was constituted jointly by the National Museum of Natural History and the Mercantour national park and that the latter, initially a mere terrain for the inventory, has gradually become an essential actor. This appears as an important difference with many one-shot expeditions carried out in biodiversity "hot spots".

We shall show that this specificity has had consequences on the directions of the inventory. Whereas systematicians usually organize biodiversity inventories as they wish, at least to a certain extent, here they had to take into account the will of the park to design and conduct the inventory so as to obtain useful results for nature management as well as the presence, within the staff and scientific council of the park, of people with a solid background in ecology, who had different views of how a biodiversity inventory should be carried out and of its goals. This inventory therefore developed at the interface of systematics, ecology and nature management, highlighting how they can enrich, as well as compete with, one another.