His cargo is 4kg (9lb) of alpine marmot, a mountain rodent admired by hikers and immortalised by Goethe and Beethoven.
The creature's cuddly reputation, however, belies a vicious reality. The life of an alpine marmot is a never-ending battle for dominance. They are, Bonenfant's colleague Rébecca Garcia says, "mega-violent". And now the climate crisis is making their fight for survival in the Alps more deadly than ever.
In a tiny lab in a chalet near the French-Italian border, Garcia, the site's technician, waits for Bonenfant. They have 30 minutes to bring the marmot down from the mountain, anaesthetise it, measure it, take samples of blood, hair and droppings, revive it and return it to the site where it was captured - all while avoiding a set of teeth capable of severing a human finger.
The clock is ticking: a marmot can lose its territory in under an hour.
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