The Rehabilitation and Sustainable Management of Four French Dunes" which ran from 1996 to 2001 - Biodiversity and dune protection (LIFE92 ENV/F/000024)

By their very nature, coastal dunes are a linear, frontier environment, subject to constant change by the action of the sea and winds. This unique, fragile environment is home to many `habitats" of community interest that need to be preserved. Dunes also form one of the most attractive of landscapes and are thus subjected to increasing anthropic pressure, particularly from tourism.

As the management body for a large part of the dunes on the French Atlantic Coast, the Office National des Forets (http://www.onf.fr/) implemented a Life Environment project involving four representative pilot sites and run in collaboration with a number of partners (scientists, elected officials, associations, et al.), the project worked to safeguard four exceptional sites (including two on the Acquitaine Coast) that have been incorporated into the Natura 2000 network, and to offer management solutions that can be generalised to much of Europe's mobile coastal features.

The resulting recommendations aim to provide sustainable management that combines conservation with rational tourist use. They apply to non-wooded dunes and dune forests emphasizing the capital role played by foredunes in passive resistance to marine erosion, the flexible control of white dunes, minimum intervention and the exclusion of woodland for grey dunes, low-key forest management based on the natural dynamism of oak stands, joint action for sustainable tourism, etc.

An important feature of the project was the dissemination of results. Communication on the project is aimed at several types of audiences and includes a video which shows the French and Portuguese experiences in parallel and a project summary book : "Knowledge and sustainable management of Atlantic coast dunes" (Favennec 2002)

Comment: Information via the Life web site http://europa.eu.int/ LIFE Projects web site.

References

Favennec, J. 2002. Connaissance et Gestion Durable des Dunes de la Côte Atlantique.. Office National des Forêts, France.