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An ecological and hydraulic restoration programme was launched in 2001 on a section of the French Rhone upstream of Lyon. Two research teams, one specializing in life sciences, the other in social and human sciences (SHS), were charged with assessing the effects of the programme to highlight the changes that occurred in the relations between the rivers and the human collectives living along them. This article reports on the results of the SHS team based on a dual approach – consideration of the local situation and of the programme chronology. The research showed rapidly that the main effect of the programme had been the establishment in 2003 of a Syndicate of the Upper-Rhone, which become the leading actor of a development centring around the river for the waterside municipalities situated on the borders of the three departments concerned. But the main reason underlying the location of the programme on this section of the river was that for decades this section had been the target of considerable cognitive investment by scientists from Lyon University. The arguments developed, relayed by expert activist ecologists, were able to convince the authorities to select it as one of the experimental sites for a new sustainable management of rivers. By uniting the municipalities around this programme, the Upper-Rhone Syndicate established itself as a valid interlocutor to cooperate in this management.