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National Parks legislation evolves in response to institutional, social and environmental changes. These protected areas interact with the actors who use and manage them and can thus be considered as social-ecological systems. The central position of national park agents in these systems makes them the sentinels of ecological and social dynamics in the park, although they also apply regulations that are not very dynamic. The management of heritage plants such as génépi stirs up contradictory views between users and managers. We focus here on the ‘génépi harvesting social-ecological system’, more precisely on how the agents of the Mercantour National Park experience the changes that affect this system. We describe how the Park agents observe and report changes in génépi populations, in harvesting practices, in their profession and in the National Park institution. This work highlights the diversity of the agents’ experiences, depending, among other things, on changes in the priorities regarding their different activities, the types of harvesters they meet, or their assessment of the effects of harvesting and the sensitivity of génépi species and overall changes in their activity. Three quarters of the agents surveyed consider that current génépi regulations are inadequate, partly because of the mismatch between regulations and institutional and social-environmental changes. The diversity of real-life situations that the National Park agents experience in relation to multiple changes underlines the need for a broader analysis of their profession that integrates ethnology, ecology and dynamic aspects to provide a more complete view of the social-ecological systems under study.