This protected swath of steppe and low mountain ranges is starkly beautiful, with the coirón grasses and spiny bushes providing a habitat for rhea, tinamou, pigeon and burrowing owl.
At the crease he holds himself with a crouched, dense, burrowing intensity, before punching at balls with the sudden anger of a caged rat.
He did so, he says, because the project will have a devastating impact on the valley, for the mountain into which excavators have begun burrowing is rich in asbestos, a substance so toxic that "there is no such thing as a harmless level of exposure".
All around Talabre are other canyons, like Quezala, little ribbons of miraculous life burrowing down the Andes for over 2,000 metres into the desert.
That puzzled Kenneth Campbell, of the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum, because most owls hunt by night, when the tar has cooled and formed an un-sticky crust.Closer analysis showed, however, that the two most common owls in the pits were the short-eared and the burrowing owls, both of which hunt by day.
But Dr Gabet suspects other burrowing animals have the same effect, and suggests dissecting Mima mounds in different places, to see what is living in them.
Then he let this model run for the equivalent of several hundred years of burrowing.
Moreover, the absence of mounds in Antarctica, a continent devoid of burrowing mammals, is consistent with his hypothesis.Even with this biological explanation, however, Mima mounds still have a geological feel to them.
Its initial pride at imposing internal security, constructing an effective administration and rebuilding Gaza by burrowing tunnels into Egypt is turning to embarrassment.
The Post Office, a sacred cow which even Mrs Thatcher feared to tackle, is a test of New Labour's claim to have found a third way between privatisation and public control.For the past six months, four working groups from the Department of Trade and Industry have been burrowing away seeking a solution.
He works on clams and is building robot versions of them to find out how the shape of an animal's shell affects its chances of survival.Many types of clam escape predators by burrowing into the sea bed using alternating movements of their shell and of the soft, muscular foot contained within that shell.
