Before the "Landes desert" The Landes to Gascogne was a periglacial desert between 21,000 BC and 16,000 BC.
Loess, fine sediment produced by glaciation, was blown into the Aquitanian Basin forming a sandy desert. During the
Magdalenian period of the
Upper Paleolithic, the Landes de Gascogne was uninhabited (but not uncrossable). It formed a "quasi-cultural barrier" between the people living on either side of it. Concerning the history of the vegetation, based on
pollen data, the Landes de Gascogne territory was covered by an important diversified forest (oak, elm, lime, ash, beech, pine, etc.) during the first half of the
Holocene (9,700 to 3,900 BC). At the start of the Holocene the forest cover was characterized by a large pine forest, replaced around 6000–5500 BC by an oak grove rich in
heliophyte trees and shrubs (birch, hazel, alder, etc.). Although it was subject to regular deforestation from the late
Neolithic (around 3500 BC) this forest persisted until the beginning of the
Middle Ages (around 600 AD), from which time the intensification of human activities leads in certain sectors to its disappearance and replacement by
moorland. Concerning human occupation, pollen data indicate
anthropization dating back to the first half of the Early Neolithic (5,500–6,000 years BC), without archaeological remains to confirm this. The occupation is perennial from the late Neolithic (3500 BC), intensifies during Protohistory (from 3500 BC) and reaches a peak during the Middle Ages. The traditional image of the Grande-Lande is of a marginal or inhospitable space, caricatured under the term "Landes desert". However, this space should be reconsidered as previously densely populated and exploited from the end of the Neolithic period.
Agro-pastoral system (For more information on the Gironde Landes in the 18th century, see ,
Variétés Bordeloises, article XXXIX, pages 412–422.) Until the middle of the 19th century, the inhabitants of the Landes had to contend with the extreme poverty of the soils of their communes. The moor consisted of vast expanses of bare, swampy, flat and unhealthy land. The Landais lived by the agro-pastoral system. Grouped together in "airials" (small isolated hamlets), they cultivated rye and millet, the basis of their meager diet, and raised sheep whose role was to fertilize the land. The image of perched on their stilts comes from this period. This means of locomotion was perfectly adapted to monitor the herds, and to move quickly over long distances. According to historians cows were numerous before the classic image emerged of the Landes shepherd watching from the top of his stilts as his sheep grazed the short heath. The great
epizootic of 1775 destroyed the cows and sheep prevailed. Likewise, it was only after the disappearance of a large part of the forest, decimated in the 17th century by frost, fires and deforestation, that short heath emerged at the end of the 18th century. On the initiative of the "
Captaux de Buch", local lords in the
Pays de Buch, undertook to fix the moving sands of the coast which threatened the neighboring dwellings. Later drained the moor by digging ditches, locally called
crastes. Indeed, the situation had become difficult in the moors, where all agricultural experiments (rice, mulberry trees, peanuts, tobacco, etc.) had so far failed. Sandy and soggy soils did not allow crops to grow, and
malaria epidemics decimated the population. Pine was, and remains, the only species that could grow in the poor soils of the moors. This work resulted in the law of 19 June 1857, which required all the municipalities of the Landes de Gascogne to drain their wet moors to enhance them, in particular by afforestation with maritime pine (
Pinus pinaster). Due to lack of financial means, most municipalities were forced to sell their moors to individuals, thus privatizing the municipalities. Until then, the region had of natural forests, which would be extended throughout the Landes de Gascogne. The face of the region was profoundly transformed and the pine became the "golden tree" for its resin.
Fixation of the dunes |thumb Until the shifting dunes of the Aquitaine coast were fixed, the wind regularly carried large amounts of sand inland. Many villages had to be moved or rebuilt. The pioneers of the fixation include the
Captaux of the de Ruat family who carried out conclusive tests at
La Teste-de-Buch at the end of the 18th century. This work was extended to the entire coast by men like , Baron Charlevoix de Villiers, , and . The French state took charge of building a stabilized coastal barrier during the nineteenth century: in 1876 were fixed. During the twentieth century, the
National Forestry Office (ONF) managed and maintained these dunes.
Transformation of the interior lande Tapping Tapping trees is a thousand-year-old activity in the Landes de Gascogne. The first tappers exploited the embryos of what would become the largest forest in Europe to make a sort of tar used for caulking boats. They were found near the coast, in
Lacanau,
La Teste-de-Buch,
Arcachon,
Biscarrosse and
Hossegor. With the disappearance of pastoralism and the massive plantations of maritime pines, the tapping process spread throughout the forest and became a flagship industrial activity of the region until the 1950s. After distillation of the harvested resin, two compounds are obtained that are useful for industry:
rosin (70%) and
turpentine (20%). The outlets were mainly in the chemical industry. Tapping disappeared at the end of the 1980s, and nowadays the Landes Forest feeds the paper industry. Tourism has also been one of the region's main sources of income since the beginning of the 20th century.
1945 Ordinance and its extensions In the nineteenth century, after the great reforestation of the 1850–1880 period that followed the
law of 1857,
wildfires became more serious, especially during the years of great droughts such as 1871, 1893, 1922 and 1937. During
World War II, the usual causes of fires in peacetime such as lightning and carelessness were supplemented by causes linked to hostilities such as guerrillas of the
French Resistance, plane crashes, landmines in the coastal dunes and scarcity of firefighters. It is estimated that between 1942 and 1945 over were destroyed. Faced with the scale of the disasters, at the
Liberation of France the
Provisional Government of the French Republic issued the Ordinance of 28 April 1945 relating to the development of the Landes de Gascogne region. The explanatory memorandum states that, A first credit of four hundred million old francs was committed from the state budget. There followed the regional decree of the Commissioner of the Republic in Bordeaux of 26 March 1946, which required the creation of organizations, voluntary or official, for defense of forests against fire in all the municipalities of the forest massif. Next the decree of 25 March 1947 created in each of the three departments of the Landes de Gascogne (Gironde, Landes and Lot-et-Garonne) a corps of professional forest firefighters. As early as 1948, large credits from the National Forest Fund recently created in 1946 were granted to reforest disaster areas and to equip the massif with preventive means and active control. After the
1949 Landes forest fire claimed 82 lives, a backup plan called the "Plan de Labouheyre" was drawn up. A Regional Commission of Landes de Gascogne was immediately constituted which met for the first time on 16 November 1949 in
Labouheyre, Landes. It concluded an agreement between public services and forest owners for organization of a fire defense. A Central Commission replaced the regional one by ministerial decree of 17 December 1949. A network of firebreaks, tracks and drainage ditches was built. == The Landes, what definition? ==