Écrins National Park

About

The Parc national des Écrins is a French national park created in 1973, having been prefigured in 1913. It is located in the Alps, extending on a large part of the Écrins massif with the eponymous top of the Écrins bar at 4,102 m above sea level. It is located in communes of two departments: Isère (region Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes) and Hautes-Alpes (region Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur) and overlaps the boundary between Alpes du Nord and Alpes du Sud in France, formed by the water divide between the Isère and Durance river basins. Its core is classified as a Category II protected area by the World Commission on Protected Areas of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN, the world's leading non-governmental organization dedicated to nature conservation), while its optimal area of membership is classified as Category V.