The main focus of the preservation of the habitat for flora and fauna on the Camargue has fallen not to any government agency to a privately-funded institute of world reputation. This is probably the reason that the whole Camargue is managed so well and so efficiently. The Swiss Hoffmann family has already been mentioned in this account with the daughter Maja being responsible for paying for the cultural extravaganza that has been created on the site of the of old SNCF factory in Arles. Her late father Luc, a botanist and naturalist of repute, has made an infinitely more significant use of the family fortune that derives from being majority shareholders in the pharmaceutical conglomerate Hoffmann-La Roche by founding the Tour du Valat  biological research station in 1954 on the estate he had bought in 1947 while working there on his PhD. The institute not only continues to provide practical responses to problems regarding the conservation and sustainable management of natural resources on the marsh, but it also has laboratories, experimental field sites and offices surrounded by wetlands and various other Mediterranean habitats.  It has also been the training ground for many notable experts in the field.