Established in 1989, the Mont Avic Natural Park is the first regional natural park in the Aosta Valley. Its protected area borders with that of the Gran Paradiso National Park.
The Mont Avic Natural Park encloses very suggestive landscapes and environments modified only marginally by man, in particular where the rough terrain has limited agro-pastoral and tourist activities.
The upper Champorcher valley, with a gentler orography, has vast meadows that are home to ibexes, chamois and marmots.
The park has been declared a site of community importance and a special protection area under Natura 2000 , the ecological network that safeguards biodiversity in Europe.
The woods of the park, which in the past were exploited for mining, today offer a spectacle of great beauty. More than a third of the protected area is covered by extensive forests of mountain pine, Scots pine, larch and beech.
The Mont Avic Natural Park has many interesting natural elements: particular geological formations, alpine floristic endemisms and plant associations linked to the substrate of green stones, dozens of stretches of water, marshes and peat bogs, without equal in number and extension in the Aosta Valley ; a fauna represented by all the best-known animals of Alpine diffusion present in the region.
Located in Chevrère in the village of Covarey, the visitor center of the Mont Avic Natural Park includes:
- an information point where you can view films and photographs dedicated to the Park on a large video wall, obtain detailed information and materials on Mont Avic and the entire network of Alpine protected areas and consult naturalistic publications;
- a naturalistic museum that describes the rocky environments, wetlands and forests of the Park, involving the visitor with interactive systems;
- a multipurpose room where didactic activities, screenings, conferences and temporary exhibitions can be carried out;
- a 1:5,000 scale model, located in the green area, which faithfully reproduces the Park and its surroundings.
Inside the Center it is possible to purchase a map of the Mont Avic Park on a scale of 1:25,000 for €5.00, with useful information for hikers in Italian, French and English and with the aid of two simplified cartographic inserts .
Another reliable guide to the Park's routes, refuges and refreshment points is the "Parco Mont Avic" APP, which can be downloaded free of charge for both iPhone and Android and can also be used in off-line mode, therefore usable even in points where the telephone does not receive.