The Cévennes National Park was created in 1970 with the aim of conserving landscapes, lifestyles, habitats and species in the less populated areas of the region. These landscapes had been previously described as ruined by animal rearing but were no longer despised. On the contrary they were praised for their originality, their beauty and their apparently unchanged nature. Among several options, the project of the Park is focused on the conservation of the current state. Unlike other National Parks, human activities are not excluded from the park’s core area. The management principles of the Park includes a close interest paid to human activities. However – at least at the outset, their importance for conservation and landscape structure is not fully understood. These activities will evolve under the effects of national and european policies. When setting up a management system in a small area, the values and traditions of different groups (conservationists, farmers, forest owners and managers, hunters ...) have been brought together. The relationships between those diverses professional cultures were complicated by the emergence of a politics of territorial development, by public support for farmers and by the resulting changes in farm management. Several interdisciplinary research programs have accompanied and guided park management. This article analyses the phases in the encounters between farmers and conservationists from the end of the 19th century when the first environmental analyses of the territory were issued and when farming, in the Cévennes and more widely, in all western Europe, were at the beginning of a major tranformation