"It's a green hole where a river sings ..." A thousand kilometers and the whole of France may well separate the Ardennes – the setting for Arthur Rimbaud's most famous poem, from Moulis, a small town in the Ariège region bathed by the Lez river – but the line seems to have been written for this Pyrenean village. The whole stanza, in fact. The silver rags clinging to the grass, the proud mountain gleaming under the timid winter sun. Finally, there's the clatter of the world, disturbing this idyllic nature. Not war and its murderous bullets, as in The Sleeper in the Valley, but the battle of a generation, the fight against climate change.

The CNRS [France's National Center for Scientific Research] has set up its theoretical and experimental ecology station here. Eighteen permanent researchers, many of them internationally renowned, and as many research engineers. Add to this the number of PhD students, post-docs and technicians, and you have some 70 people dedicated to deciphering current ecological issues, from micro-organisms to vertebrates, scrutinized from every angle and on every scale, from the individual to the ecosystem. "A unique tool, an enchanting setting, exceptional colleagues: for me, it's almost unhoped-for," said Camille Parmesan, who has been managing the facility for the past two years.

Not so much because of the ecologist's American nationality: The CNRS doesn't reserve any of its jobs for French people, or even Europeans. But the 63-year-old Texan has a much rarer quality: "Scientific refugee," she said with a smile and a Yankee accent that's hard to beat. Five years ago, she landed in France as part of a program known as MOPGA. Remember: In June 2017, President Donald Trump announced that his country was leaving the Paris climate accords. The next day, Emmanuel Macron, in a solemn address, invited American scientists who might feel hindered to come and pursue their mission in French laboratories, with this slogan, mirroring "Make America great again": "Make our planet great again." "We were living in Great Britain at the time, my husband's home country, but we had decided to leave after Brexit. We couldn't go back to America because Trump had started trashing all climate change research. So, even though he's not very popular here, I have to say it: Macron saved me."

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