Landes forest

The Landes Forest, or Landes de Gascogne Forest, is a French forest massif located in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, in the departments of Landes, Gironde, and Lot-et-Garonne. Bordered to the west by the Atlantic Ocean (Côte d’Argent), it is shaped like a triangle with the apexes being Pointe de Grave to the north, the seaside resort of Capbreton to the south, and the town of Nérac to the east.

The major cities around the forest massif are Bordeaux to the north, Mont-de-Marsan, Dax and Bayonne to the south.

The largest artificial forest in Western Europe, covering an area of 13,000 km² (1,300,000 hectares), it was created in the 19th century on relatively poor sandy soils. Today, it consists largely of intensive monoculture of maritime pine.

Mainly privately owned, it includes a few areas of state-owned forest located near the Atlantic coastline.

The inland forest is populated by plant and animal species that have been documented. On the plant side, the emblematic species are the maritime pine, the cork oak, the holm oak, and the bracken fern. On the animal side, the roe deer, the wild boar, the European badger, the common genet, the European hedgehog, the red squirrel, the buzzard, certain owls, the barn owl, the pheasant, the magpie, the green and great spotted woodpeckers, the jay, the collared snake, the asp viper, the green lizard, the wall lizard, the green frog, the southern tree frog, the common toad, the fire salamander, as well as many other small or migratory species inhabit this ecosystem.