Greenline parks in France: Les Parcs Naturels Régionaux

Agriculture and Human Values14: 337–352, 1997.c 1997Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Greenline parks in France: Les Parcs Naturels Regionaux

Gilbert F. LaFreniereWillamette University, Salem, Oregon, USA

Accepted in revised form April 28, 1997

Abstract. Greenline parks are typically regions of mixed agricultural, grazing, and forest lands of sufficient scenic and/orecological value to merit conservation and preservation under a land-use management plan for land largely in privateownership. The Parcs Naturels Regionaux (PNR) are a national system of greenline parks created in France in 1967to protect agriculture and other values in less favored areas (typically hills or low mountains) suffering depopulationand economic deprivation aggravated by the Common Agricultural Policy created under the European EconomicCommunity in 1956 with a major objective of self-sufficiency in food production. Two developments contributing tocreation of the PNR were the mechanization of French agriculture and increasing environmental awareness in France.The PNR emphasizes rural agricultural development, conservation, and recreation, but ecological preservation hasincreased in importance, as reflected in recent policy changes. The national parks of the United Kingdom are a systemof greenline parks slightly older than the PNR. Recent research has allowed comparative studies of the two systems,leading to the conclusion that the British National Parks have suffered from heavy-handed centralized planning thathas alienated local farmers and communities, while the PNR, under more local control, has neglected some of itsconservation and preservation responsibilities. However, recent policy reform promises to improve the PNR throughmore rigorous enforcement of conservation and ecological goals by the central government.

Key words: National parks, Conservation, Preservation, France, United Kingdom

Gilbert F. LaFreniere is Professor of Geology and Environmental Studies and Director of the Environmental ScienceProgram at Willamette University (Salem, Oregon). He has published in the areas of geology and environmental history.His historical specialization is in the early modern period, focusing particularly on the idea of progress as the dominantphilosophy of history in the Western world view.

Introduction

During the nineteenth century the USA led the way in thepreservation of nature by setting aside areas of wildernessand spectacular landscapes as federally owned nationalparks. In the twentieth century this precedent and a grow-ing environmental awareness inspired the setting aside ofnumerous national parks in countries around the globe. Aswe approach the twenty first century, three major trends,the loss of wilderness, escalating land values, and thetightening of national budgets, have quietly shifted theconcerns of some environmentalists toward a very differ-ent kind of “park” as an important complement to wilder-ness areas and national parks. These specially managedhumanized areas are known as “greenline parks” and areperhaps best defined as follows: “A large, scenic land-scape area that is protected by law and regulation frombeing overtaken by unplanned development to the extentthat it retains its natural, scenic, or historic attributes;the area is often in productive use by traditionally low-impact, land-oriented industries, like fishing, farming,

ranching, or timbering; the protections for such a land-scape are cooperatively arranged and managed by citizensand agencies on the local, state, and federal levels, usuallythrough a joint commission.”1 A more succinct definitionof greenline parks is “: : : coherent landscape areas withoutstanding public values that were (or could be) partiallyowned by public and quasipublic agencies, but for themost part would consist of unspoiled land still in privateownership.”2 Examples of greenline parks are the Adiron-dack State Park in New York, the New Jersey PinelandsReserve, the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Areain Oregon and Washington, the British National Parks,and the Parcs Naturels Regionaux of France (PNR). Whatall of these “parks” have in common is that much of ormost of the land within the park boundary is in privateownership but under the protection of a special land-usemanagement plan.

The concept of the greenline park can be traced backat least as far as William Wordsworth, who wrote in 1810that his beloved Lake District ought to be preserved as“a sort of national property, in which every man has a

338 GILBERT F. LAFRENIERE

right and interest who has an eye to perceive and a heartto enjoy.”3 In practice, following the Town and CountryPlanning Act of 1947, the British established a nationalsystem of greenline parks under the National Parks andAccess to the Countryside Act of 1949. British nationalparks are nothing like American national parks, but aregenerally scenic pastoral areas of stringently regulatedprivate lands.4 As we shall see, the objectives of theBritish national parks and other greenline parks in West-ern Europe are in conflict with the goals of the CommonAgricultural Policy that exists within the EuropeanUnion.The PNR of France are very similar to the British nationalparks and comparative studies of the two greenline parksystems will be considered later on in this paper.

Aldo Leopold implied the need for greenline parkswhile laying the intellectual foundations for a land ethicin the USA. InA Sand County Almanac(1949) and otherworks Leopold expressed grave concern that the domi-nance of the profit motive in American agriculture hasundermined our general desire and ability to be goodstewards of the land. His experience of the failure ofgovernment-funded CCC programs in southwestern Wis-consin during the Great Depression led him to the con-clusion that an ecological education of all members of thecommunity (i.e., all American citizens, including farm-ers), would be a necessary pre-requisite to reforms thatmight implement conservation practices and good stew-ardship as a counterweight to the profit motive.5 Ecology,the missing component in conservation education at thetime, was recognized by Leopold as being better appliedin Europe, where, in forest management practices, “inter-dependence of the forest and its constituent tree species,ground flora, and fauna is taken for granted.”6 Regard-ing the relationship of ecological values to farmlands, hewrote:

Lack of economic value is sometimes a character notonly of species or groups, but of entire biotic communi-ties: marshes, bogs, dunes, and “deserts” are examples.Our formula in such cases is to relegate their conser-vation to government as refuges, monuments, or parks.The difficulty is that these communities are usuallyinterspersed with more valuable private lands; the gov-ernment cannot possibly own or control such scatteredparcels. The net effect is that we have relegated someof them to extinction over large areas.If the privateowner were ecologically minded, he would be proudto be the custodian of a reasonable proportion of suchareas, which add diversity and beauty to his farm andto his community(Italics mine).7

It is precisely the non-economic values described byLeopold that private property owners in France areexposed to under the environmental inventories andimplementing management plans required of regions

that apply to become members of the Parcs NaturelsRegionaux. The same applies to private property ownersin American greenline parks such as the Adirondack Parkor Columbia Gorge National Scenic Area. This does notmean that there isn’t considerable antipathy and resistanceto greenline park creation in both countries on the part ofmany private property owners. However, the dialecticalprocess of public debate over land-use issues that mustprecede approval of a greenline park is an educationalexperience that teaches the merits of sound land-use plan-ning and management. Many farmers, foresters, and cat-tle ranchers have shifted towards a more environmentallyresponsible land ethic in the course of creating French andAmerican greenline parks.

The dominant theme in the theory and practice ofgreenline parks isconservationism, which implies prudentmanagement and careful utilization of natural resources.Compared to Americans, Western Europeans, includingthe French, are accomplished conservationists. Neverthe-less, a degree of preservation is necessary as part of theconservationism applied in French regional natural parks.For example, historical architecture is assiduously pro-tected, restored, and preserved, as are unique ecosystemssuch as lakes, marshes, and remnants of natural forestecosystems, which are typically purchased by govern-ment and other funds and placed in natural reserves withingreenline park boundaries.8

Unfortunately, greenline parks in the USA are likelyto develop haphazardly in the near future, their creationlargely dependent upon local initiative. Lacking a nationalsystem of pastoral parks at present, it should be usefullyinstructive to consider the successes and failures of nation-al systems of greenline parks in other countries, both forthe general enlightenment of the American public andfor the specific knowledge needed as a basis for creatingand managing new parks. Beyond these obvious applica-tions, this study of the PNR will show that the creationof greenline parks in France and the British Isles is muchmore closely tied to problems of rural development and aglobal crisis in agricultural production on “marginal” orsecondary lands than it is in the USA.

The modernization of French agriculture

The modernization of agriculture through technologicalinnovation and economic rationalization caused and con-tinues to cause profound land-use, socioeconomic, andecological changes on the farmlands of the world. Whilelarge-scale, mechanized farming (agribusiness) thriveson rich (primary) soils on plains and lowlands, farmingon marginal or secondary soils in hilly or mountainousareas has become less and less competitive in the globalmarketplace. Depopulation and rural poverty have thusbecome commonplace, resulting in the creation of sub-

GREENLINE PARKS INFRANCE: LESPARCSNATURELS REGIONAUX 339

sidies through price supports and an “artificial market”within the European Union, increased mechanization, andgovernment-funded rural development projects. Withinthis context, the PNR came into existence as a systemof rural development plans with a unique focus on theaesthetic, recreational, and ecological values of predom-inantly hilly and mountainous areas of mixed farming,grazing, and forest uses.

The two major developments leading to the concep-tualization and implementation of the PNR were (1) thepost-Second World War mechanization of agriculture andthe development of associated social, political, and eco-nomic structures, from communal farms and agrariancredit unions to the European Economic Community(EEC) and its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP); and(2) the evolution of an environmental consciousness andenvironmental institutions. These two historical develop-ments converged in 1967 to create the PNR. I will sum-marize pertinent aspects of post-war agrarian history priorto discussing the rise of French environmentalism and itssignificance for the PNR.

First, however, it is essential to describe briefly theenvironmental significance of the EEC, the EuropeanCommunity (EC), the European Union (EU), and the CAP.The EEC was created by the treaty of Rome on March 25,1956. In 1986, the EEC was superseded by the EC throughratification of the Single European Act. The EC was inturn superseded by the EU under the Maastricht Treaty of1991. The dominatingeconomic objective under the EEC,EC, and EU has been the realization of European self-sufficiency in food. This goal, originally to be achievedunder the CAP, has led to a policy of “total farming,”maximizing both the areal extent of farming and produc-tivity (through utilizing high inputs of energy, fertilizer,and pesticide). Ecologically, the CAP has been a majordisaster overall. For example, roughly a third of Britishfarmland has been badly eroded and comparable damagehas occurred in regions of southern France and Greece.In addition, many wetlands have been filled, numerousforests have been cut, and surface and ground water pol-lution are commonplace. Under the CAP, massive subsi-dies have been paid, particularly to lowland farmers onprime soils, to boost surpluses of grain, corn, and dairyproducts, some of which are sold to Russia and EasternEurope at subsidized low prices. Thus, with subsidies andrelated costs, agriculture has accounted for as much astwo-thirds of the EEC budget (1985) while causing mas-sive environmental degradation and sacrificing long-termagricultural sustainability for short-term self sufficiency.9

Prior to World War II, the idea ofpreservingthe ruralFrench landscape would have seemed absurd.French agri-culture was then labor-intensive, economically inefficient,and based upon the small family farm, an agriculturalway of life that had changed slowly and gradually sincethe shift from medieval feudal estates to private property

ownership that accelerated during the French Revolu-tion. Nineteenth century industrialization and urbaniza-tion made the leisure classes more aware of the aestheticvalue of the pastoral landscape, from the Romantic Move-ment to the Impressionist celebration of “la campagne” atthe end of the century. Simultaneously, the lure of thecity and jobs in industry and services slowly depopulatedsome rural areas and maintained a demographic equilib-rium in others as surplus population moved to the cities.These gradual trends continued until after 1945, when theAmerican model of machine agriculture began to changethe venerable pastoral landscape of France with unprece-dented suddenness. In 1920, there were 250,000 tractorsin the USA; by 1945 there were 2,354,000.10 In compari-son, the number of tractors in France in 1946 were a mere35,000, rising to 230,000 by 1954.11 As John Ardaghwrites:

In the decades after the war, French farming wentthrough what even cautious scholars described as a“revolution.” In no other aspect of French life waschange so dramatic, or the conflict between old andnew so sharp. After 1945, farm mechanization soonbegan to make economic nonsense of France’s vastpeasant community and the great exodus began, to newjobs in the towns. Over six million people have nowmoved off the land, and agriculture’s share of France’sactive population has dropped from 35 percent in 1939to 8 percent in 1987.12

In France Today and Rural France, John Ardaghadmirably distills the history of French agriculture sinceWorld War II from a complex welter of demographic andinstitutional changes. Geographically, the major divisionin French agriculture today is between the large wheatand cattle farms of the Paris basin and the plains ofthe northeast, and the much smaller farms of the restof the country.13 The average size of French farms issmall by American standards, but between 1955 and thelate 1980s it has increased from 35 to 80 acres.14 Thisincrease is largely the result of the process ofremembre-ment(regrouping), the state policy of subsidizing up to 80percent of the legal and field costs of rational exchangesof scattered parcels of agricultural land in patterns of own-ership that impede the shift to modern mechanized agri-culture. More than 31 million acres have beenremem-breessince 1945, but far more in the progressive norththan in the more conservative south.15 The mixed suc-cess ofremembrementis better understood against thebackground of post-war institutional changes in Frenchagriculture.

Dating from the time of Napoleon and earlier, agricul-tural land in France was reduced to smaller and smallerownerships resulting from the laws of equal inheritance.The diminishing economic viability of shrinking family


farms led to the 1892 national reforms that protectedFrench farmers from competition by implementing hightariffs on imports. Stagnation followed until the Vichygovernment encouraged farmerssyndicates(groups) dur-ing World War II. These were abolished with the libera-tion, only to return under the leadership of “Militant Left-ish Catholicism” in the 1950s. Although the main union ofagricultural syndicates remained under the control of therich farmers of the north, thereby controlling state subsi-dies, a splinter group led the way to reforming small-scalepeasant agriculture that culminated in the Pisani Law.This1960 law established an agency for buying and redistribut-ing land (remembrement) and encouraged farmers to formsyndicatesfor marketing as well as for shared production.Modernization, guided by these structural changes, hascontinued to the present day, with the peasant exodus tothe towns enabling farm expansion to increase averagefarm size. Simultaneously, the peasants who remained onthe land have become better educated, more technicallytrained, and more socially integrated into local businesscommunities in the towns.16 Unfortunately, despite theseimprovements, many small farmers of the hilly and moun-tainous regions of France remain at the mercy of pricefluctuations and overproduction related to policies of theEEC and CAP and their successors. The EEC did notdevelop a policy and institutions for aiding these regionsof France and other EEC countries until the 1970s, afterthe PNR had already come into existence as an earlierinstitution designed to assist Less Favored Areas (LFAs).

Politically, contemporary France is divided intoregions, departments, cantons, and communes. There aremore than 36,000 communes in France, with rural regionscovering 85% of the area and containing 27% of the pop-ulation of the nation. Since World War II, pressure formore local political control resulted in the Law of Decen-tralization of 1983, which devolved “both administrativeand financial control from the state to the regions.”17 ThePrefet is the representative of the state for each Frenchregion, such as Auvergne or Aquitaine. Since 1983, theexecutive power of each region has been transferred fromthe Prefet to the Conseil Regional, which allocates ablock grant from the national government to the region.Under this arrangement, land-use planning and controlof development is left to individual communes, but thecommunes are encouraged to formsyndicatsthat arrangerural development contracts with the region. A variety ofsuch contracts for promoting integrated rural developmentincludes thesyndicat mixte, which is the usual contractualbasis for the Normandie-Maine and other regional naturalparks described within the body of this paper.18 I will nextconsider the origins of French environmentalism beforeturning to the institutional details of the PNR itself.

The origins of French environmentalism and theParcs Naturels Regionaux

Little of wild nature or wilderness exists in modernFrance, not unlike the rest of Europe. For example, dueto recent illegal hunting, only a few remaining brownbears in France survive in the western Pyrenees. Theseare now protected, at least in theory, in the Parc Nation-al des Pyrenees Occidental, but the remaining bears arelargely outside the park. In the national parks created inthe Alps, Pyrenees, and Cevennes in the 1960s, the vis-itor is aware of an almost ubiquitous human presence.Nature, to the mind of the average French person, typ-ically consists of the mix of wild and domesticated lifeforms and the humanized, pastoral landscapes in whichthey and the rural population live. Large predators havebeen extirpated from even the wildest of these regions(with the above exception), the last wolf having beenshot in 1934 and last Alpine bear having been seen in1937.19 Only the wild boar and the stag (cerf) or red deerremain as formidable wild creatures in the larger of theforests, which cover 26% of the country’s surface today.20

In comparison, at the beginning of the Christian era theforest is estimated to have covered more than 60% of whatis now France. Deforestation began in earnest during theHigh Middle Ages, contemporary with the proliferationof Romanesque and Gothic cathedrals and monastic andparish churches, all of which required enormous quanti-ties of wood for ceilings in the earlier churches and forscaffolding throughout this and later periods of construc-tion. Increased ship building for commerce and militaryneeds, smelting, and other uses further diminished Frenchforests until the French state under Louis XIV began toenforce forest management laws.21At the beginning of theFrench Revolution, the forest had shrunk to less than halfof what it is today,22 although the creation of the mono-cultural pine forest of Les Landes since the eighteenthcentury makes this comparison somewhat misleading.

Although the above causes accelerated the deforesta-tion of France and the rest of Europe, it was the conversionof woodland to agricultural and grazing land that was thedominant and inexorable long-term cause of deforesta-tion. Farmlands expanded and contracted with historicalchange, from the vicissitudes of the late Roman Empireto the Black Plague of the fourteenth century, but even bythe time of the plague, Europe had reached its carryingcapacity as population outstripped agricultural productiv-ity. Following massive depopulation by the plague, theEuropean population had again exceeded its food supplyby the sixteenth century, and colonization of the NewWorld by excess European population culminated in anexodus of 50 million between 1820 and 1930.23


After millennia of historical change and the powerfulimprint of medieval cities, architecture, and feudal pat-terns of land use upon the rural landscape of France, mod-ern French people had inherited a pastoral environment ofmixed farmlands, grazing lands, and woodlots of excep-tional beauty in its diversity. This pastoral, rural, or agrar-ian environment has been referred to by Leo Marx as the“middle landscape” that stands between the extremes ofwilderness on the one hand and the city on the other.24 Per-haps the most successful early popularizer of the beautyof the French pastoral landscape and its traditional culturewas Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778). In the courseof his life, Rousseau walked thousands of miles acrossFrance, Switzerland, and Italy, leaving us a record ofhis enjoyment of nature and the agrarian way of life inhisConfessions, Reveries of a Solitary Walker, and otherautobiographical works. Rousseau’s pre-Romantic emo-tional response to the aesthetic and moral values of theFrench countryside, combined with his theories of humannature, society, and politics in theDiscourses, Social Con-tract, and other works, has led some scholars to credithim with a major foundational role in the development ofFrench environmental thought.25

Rousseau and the nineteenth century painters, poets,novelists, and other artists of the Romantic Movementwho followed him instilled in the literate and increasinglyurban French populace an aesthetic appreciation and emo-tional reverence for the French pastoral landscape that wasclosely connected to the notion of patrimony, the partlynationalistic feeling of attachment to the countryside andthe traditional cultural heritage that had intensified duringand after the French Revolution. Narrowly defined,le pa-trimoineconsists of one’s heritage from one’s father, butfiguratively it also refers to the common heritage of thepeople, whether it be the Basilisk of Notre Dame or therural landscape. The sense of a common heritage wouldplay a significant role in the origin of the PNR. Especiallyafter 1830, the efforts of Viollet LeDuc and others inrestoring medieval French architecture (made culturallyrespectable again by the Romantics) tended to reinforcethe French sense of patrimony at the same time that therailroads began to make the countryside more available totourists and urbanites seeking respite from industrializingcities. This pattern of increased use of pastoral landscapesand restored rural towns for recreation has continued andintensified to the present day.

Another historical basis for the origin of the PNRhas been the development of French forest managementinstitutions during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.Although embracing conservationist rather than preser-vationist values in general, these institutions graduallyassimilated the ideas of a growing preservationist move-ment culminating in the creation of extensive Frenchnational parks in the Alps, Pyrenees, and Massif Centralduring the 1960s. The PNR was formed shortly after the

majority of French national parks were created. The hist-ory of French forestry in relation to French national parksis summarized in a recent article by Stephanie Pincetl,who, although she does not discuss the PNR, describesnational park characteristics very similar to those of theFrench regional natural parks:

Many French recognize that, in practice, national parksare as much cultural enclaves as nature preserves, amerger of scenic and historic preservation. This hasbeen primarily a development of the late-twentieth cen-tury, when national economic restructuring has largelybeen complete. The major rural-to-urban migrationshave taken place and the peasant population is great-ly reduced. People who have remained on the land doso under very different circumstances than in the nine-teenth century when the process began. Discussionsabout parks in the 1960s took into account the degradedrural economy and explicitly tied further park creationto economic development through supporting agricul-tural interests and tourism.26

The PNR has been comparably pragmatic in combin-ing local development with the protection of nature, inlarge part because the parks require local approval. Naturepreservation is also far less strongly enforced under thePNR than under the national park system in France, in partbecause the regional natural parks are located in areas ofhigher population density with little pristine nature left toprotect. Since the opening of the Forestry School at Nancyin 1824 and the establishment of the Corps Forestier (theequivalent of the US Forest Service), the major objectiveof French forest management has been to plant mono-cultural tree plantations (in addition to select cutting ofmore natural forests) to provide for the nation’s need forwood products, and also to prevent soil erosion and pro-tect watersheds.

Organizational structure of the Parcs NaturelsRegionaux

In the introduction toLes Parcs Naturels Regionaux deFrance, Jean Carlier explains how the frenetic economicdevelopment of the 1950s and early 1960s led to laws thatcreated the greatly enlarged system of French NationalParks (1960) and that implemented water quality man-agement (1964). Lamenting the fact that the majority ofnational parks came a century after Yellowstone in theUS (1872) and that only scraps of humanized, inhabitednature were left to be preserved, mainly in the Alps, Pyre-nees, and Cevennes (southern Massif Central), Carliercounts himself among those who would later be knownas “ecologistes” and who sought protection for the rurallandscapes of the rest of France.27 Carlier recalls the


missionary-like fervor that animated the colloquium thatgathered in Lurs, Provence in 1966, and that, only sixmonths later, brought about the public decree that createdthe “parcs naturels regionaux.” He finds this term hope-lessly oxymoronic as a name for the new rural institution,for the areas protected are nothing like any traditionalpark, are far more cultural than natural, and sometimesconsist of disparate units from different regions. A lessmisleading term such as “land-use plan” would have beenmore appropriate, but the name took hold.28

The decree of March 1, 1967 states: “The territory ofall or part of one or more communes can be classifiedas a ‘parc naturel regional’ when they can demonstratea particular value of their natural and cultural patrimonyfor relaxation, rest, and tourism, and that it is importantto protect and organize it.”29 A 1975 decree recognizedthe regional parks as a useful land-use management toolfor “natural” areas and a 1988 revision officially endorsedtheir socio-economic functions. To date, there are morethan 30 parks comprising over 9 percent of the area ofFrance.30 During the period 1967–1995, the PNR objec-tives have shifted from a rural development orientationmore toward environmental and aesthetic preservation.31

The organizational structure of the PNR differs fromthat of French national parks and natural reserves in sev-eral ways. First, the PNR does not provide specific legis-lation for environmental protection, but instead functionsthrough local coordination of existing land-use regula-tions. Secondly, each regional natural park writes its ownconstitutive charter, a contractual document that must beapproved by asyndicate mixteof the representatives ofcommunes, departments, regions, the State, public agen-cies involved in natural resource management, and localgroups such as chambers of commerce. Under the char-ter, rural communities knowingly accept the obligation toapply real constraints to themselves concerning treatmentof the environment. In other words, in theory they adopta land ethic as a moral promise. It is this element in thecharter that distinguishes it from other rural managementstructures (e.g.,Syndicats Inter-Communauxor Contratde Pays).32 Finally, the funding of individual regional nat-ural parks is from all levels of government, whereas thenational parks are largely funded by the State. Sources offunding include the regions, the State, local departments,and communes, in decreasing order of the percentage offunding contributed.33

As the British geographer J. W. Aitchison (1984)points out, the PNR developed as a result of the real-ization that the national parks’ organization was applica-ble only to special geographic regions such as moun-tains and islands, which led to the search for a moreflexible framework under which conservation and agri-cultural development could be practiced in a comple-mentary manner.34 However, public documents of theFederation des Parcs Naturels Regionaux make it clear

that conservation and ecological preservation are sec-ondary to the primary objective of maintaining or reclaim-ing agricultural use in LFAs.35 Thus, whereas the nationalparks are generally located in high mountains, the regionalparks are generally located in lower mountains and hillyor lowland areas. There are a few exceptions, however,such as the regional parks of the Auvergne (or the nationalpark of the Cevennes), where demographic and other fac-tors have been more important than topography and ele-vation in determining park function and status. What thenational and regional parks almost always do have in com-mon are poor or limited arable land and or the problem ofdepopulation and the abandonment of these economicallymarginal lands.

Preservation of ecosystems, or, usually, fragments ofecosystems, within the PNR is accomplished throughan environmental inventoryundertaken (usually by aresource agency of the State) prior to creation of the parkcharter. If particular species or areas require preservationmeasures, this is accomplished by setting asidereservesnaturelleswithin the park boundaries. The natural reserveapplies restrictions around lakes, ponds, marshes, or otherecologically rich sites.36 Architectural, historical, andarcheological sites within the parks also receive specialprotection. An additional objective in most parks is thepreservation of the genetic patrimony of domesticatedplants and animals.37 All of these objectives are to beaccomplished, however, within the framework of a land-use plan that emphasizes the importance of local agricul-tural, recreational, craft, and tourist development. Thesedominant goals reflect the widespread attitude of themajority of French individuals and agencies that an inten-sively managed semi-natural environment is far preferableto the almost unthinkable alternative of abandoning once-managed lands and allowing them “to go wild” (i.e., to beisolated or protected from human activity). In discussingmountainous, hilly, and wetland environments, the fol-lowing statement from the Federation des Parcs Naturelsde France, which administers the PNR, best summarizesthis attitude:

Abandonment of places where farming is difficult (dueto steep slopes, harsh climate, flooding, etc.), whiledisturbing the terms of competition between speciesthat make up the vegetative cover, leads to a profoundmodification of the fauna and flora and often contributesto a diminution of their interest.

Also, in most cases, to protect a natural space willnot consist of enclosing it in order to prevent humanactivity, but in proposing active management, in termswhich are compatible with the maintenance of biologi-cal diversity. (Emphasis in original text).

This management, which we will callrational man-agement, will allow, while building on foundations thatare borrowed from the past or,on the other hand, frankly


innovative, not only the maintenance of the biological,genetic, and aesthetic interest of a territory, but also aneconomic buffer within the framework of the struggleagainst fire, erosion, floods, or avalanches.

Furthermore, this management favors the mainte-nance of a certain amount of rural population, therebycontributing to the struggle against the exodus to thetowns.

In this case, the protection of nature and develop-ment are not only compatible, but complementary.38

It should hardly be surprising that the implicit assumptionin this policy statement from the agency chiefly respon-sible for administering the PNR is that nature is fragileand in need of protection, given that most of the lands inthe system have suffered from the environmental impactsof human use for centuries or millennia. Perhaps thisapproach is the best possible for lands humanized to thedegree that little of any original ecosystems remains. Onthe other hand many French Greens or environmental-ists have upheld the position that abandoned farm regionsshould be allowed to go fallow and “return to nature.”

In contrast to productive agriculture on prime soilsin lowland areas, most of the regional parks are devel-oped in LFAs, chiefly in mountainous and hilly areaswith limited or poor soils. Regional parks in LFAs with-in mountain zones include Corse, Haut-Languedoc, JuraGessien, Livradois-Forez, Luberon, Pilat, Queyras, Ver-cors, Volcans d’ Auvergne, and recently added Chartreuseand Grands Causses, making up 11 of the 30 parks. Parkswithin LFAs outside of the mountain zones, generally inhills or low mountains, include, among others, Landesde Gascogne, Marais Poitevin, Morvan, and Vosges duNord39 (see map of PNR, Map 1). Normandie-Maine isnot a LFA because of the higher quality of its soils andagriculture but the area suffers from severe depopulationand underdevelopment.

Whether or not a regional park is located in a LFA, wehave seen that most parks request membership in the PNRwith the dual purpose of (1) preservation of the naturaland cultural patrimony; and (2) economic developmentthrough more efficient agriculture, recreation, local hand-icrafts, and tourism. Park management and improvementschemes endorsed by the park charters to implement thesegoals have continued to the present day with few changessince Aitchison described them in 1984:

These include actions such as the construction of recep-tion centers, ecological museums, recreation areas andfield study hostels; infrastructural improvements; thecreation of workshops for local artisans; the renova-tion of property for use by agriculturalists (for exampleshepherds’ retreats in the mountains of Corsica) or vis-itors (for examplegites ruraux); and efforts to promotethe marketing of local products.Conservation programs

are more difficult to achieve since the regional parkauthorities do not have the same regulatory powers asthe administrative councils of the national parks. Nev-ertheless, the parks have established nature reserves,formed teams of architects to advise on appropriatebuilding styles and materials and, in certain regionsin association with the agricultural community, havesought to rehabilitate abandoned areas of farmland thatare of considerable ecological interest.40

Thus, despite the lack of strong regulatory and enforce-ment powers, and acknowledging that agricultural, recre-ational, and tourist development have been strongermotives than those of environmental conservation andpreservation under the PNR, detailed studies made byWelsh scholars (with the purpose of assessing and improv-ing the British National Park system) of two parks, theVolcans d’ Auvergne and Normandie-Maine, draw somepositive conclusions concerning the environmental suc-cesses and failures of the PNR. These are summarized ina separate section of this paper.

Conservation efforts in the Parcs Naturels Regionaux

The regional parks of Morvan and Les Landes providetypical examples of the kinds of environmental conserva-tion achieved in the PNR as a whole. The Parc NaturelRegional of the Morvan epitomizes the kind of half-wildpastoral landscape that the PNR is intended to preserve inworking order, i.e., maintaining a balance between sus-tainable, economically viable agriculture, local culturaltraditions and economic activity, and humanized habitatsallowed to maintain ecological diversity by preventingoverdevelopment by agribusiness, overgrazing, or devel-opment in monocultural tree plantations. The Morvan,a region of forested granite hills and low mountains inBurgundy, is named after a Celtic word for “black for-est.” It is less rugged and wild than the mountains of theAuvergne regional parks, although geologically related tothem and reaching a maximum elevation of about 3,000feet. Agriculture in the Morvan is severely constrained bya combination of thin soils, moderate to steep slopes, andpeat accumulation in poorly drained valleys. Cattle rais-ing, especially for veal, is an important source of incomealong with limited mixed agriculture. The original forestwas dominated by deciduous trees, chiefly beeches andoaks, which were logged and shipped down the Cure,Yonne, and other Burgundian rivers to Paris until thenineteenth century, when depopulation and afforestationbegan in the Morvan.41

The Morvan Regional Park was established in 1970,with an area of 173,000 hectares including 64 communesand 33,000 inhabitants. The park charter has emphasizedthe development of tourism, implementing such projects


Map 1. Locations of most of the French regional parks are shown along with four national parks in France. Several new regionalparks have been created since this map was made. All national parks are located in the high mountains and plateaus of the Alps,Pyrenees, and Cevennes.

as the cleaning of the Cure and Chalaux rivers for canoeand kayak recreation, development of transportation andlodging facilities for lake tours, the creation of ski trailsand the conversion of forestry lodges into refuge chalets,and the development of picnic areas. The park has alsoencouraged exchanges between rural and urban schools toteach city children about natural history and agriculturalwork, and has provided rural homes for city children underpublic assistance programs.42

In the century since the Morvan provided Paris withfirewood, the beeches and oaks have grown to consider-able size. In recent decades, however, the deciduous treeshave typically been cut down and replaced by faster grow-ing Douglas Fir and other evergreenson private lands. Pri-vate property covers 85% of the forested areas, with 15%managed by the National Forestry Office or as domainal(communal) forest.43 The two trends of afforestation ofagricultural land and increasing proportions of evergreenshave caused serious concern among the land-use plannersand managers of the Morvan, resulting in a public debateheld in 1992 and involving representatives of the NationalOffice of Forestry, D. R. A. F. (Direction Regionale

d’Agriculture et de la Foret), director of the MorvanRegional Park, and the environmental manager of thepark.

The round-table debate publicized the facts that, since1979, forest cover within the park had increased from40 to 50 percent and that tree plantings had shifted theratio of evergreen to deciduous trees from 30–70 per-cent to 45–55 percent during the past fifteen years. Basedupon these recent changes, participants in the debateexpressed concern for the health of forest ecosystems,particularly on private lands where the profit motive hasdriven landowners to displace mixed forests or plant aban-doned farmlands with monocultures of evergreens. Recla-mation of abandoned agricultural land from the forestwas another major concern. Unfortunately, the partici-pants saw no easy way of compensating evergreen treeplanters to induce them to manage a more diverse, eco-logically balanced forest. Confronted by this dilemma ofhow to manage private lands in the public interest, theysuggested developing a special fund for acquiring frag-ments of ecologically sensitive terrain. In addition, theywere hopeful that legal clarification and stronger enforce-


ment of PNR charters would aid conservation efforts inthe Morvan and elsewhere.44

Whereas the spread of evergreen monocultural forestsand the displacement of natural forest ecosystems is amajor problem in the Morvan and other regions such asthe Auvergne, the Landes Regional Natural Park of Gas-cony in southwestern France consists largely of a man-made evergreen forest of maritime pines planted on thelandesor moors and “wastelands” created by sand duneformation that blocked drainage and formed marshes inrecent geologic time. Les Landes Park was created in1970 and includes 206,000 hectares and 22 communeswith a population of 30,000 to the southwest of Bor-deaux, divided almost equally between the departmentsof Gironde and Landes. The park boundary essential-ly encloses the drainage basin of the Leyre River andits major tributary, the Petite Leyre, and empties into alarge and ecologically valuable estuary, the Basin d’Ar-cachon. The Teich delta formed by the Leyre River at thesoutheast corner of the Bassin d’Arcachon provides someof the richest wetland bird habitat on the Atlantic coastof France, of international ornithological importance. In1972, the community of Teich created a 120-hectareornithological park where as many as 260 bird speciescan be seen. Fish and eel hatcheries are also located in theprotected area.45 Subsequently, 2000 hectares of wetlandon the Teich delta have been set aside for protection of theecology against construction and other human activities.46

Prior to the nineteenth century, pilgrims en routeto Santiago de Compostella traveled through a desertof sand dunes and unhealthy marshes, but the limitedagricultural and forest economy of Les Landes was trans-formed by intensive and systematic plantings of maritimepines beginning in the late eighteenth century and moreintensively during the nineteenth century. The sand blow-ing across the plain of Les Landes even menaced theBordeaux vineyards in the eighteenth century, leading toa government program of dune stabilization using pal-isades of stakes and the planting of gorse, broom, andshrubs. These were succeeded by plantations of pines andsome oak plantings. The program was greatly expandedin 1857 when Napoleon III established a law requiringcommunities to utilize fallow lands. Much of Les Landesbecame privatized and wooded, to the exclusion of mostof the original agriculture and grazing.47

Today, Les Landes is France’s most woodeddepartementand the entire man-made forest stretches 150miles along the coast and up to 60 miles inland, making itthe largest forest in Western Europe. It is one reason whynearly one-half of the forest land of the EU is in France.48

Although a monocultural tree plantation itself, the for-est of Les Landes does provide the ecological benefit ofdecreasing the pressure for overcutting in more naturalforests in other regions of France.

Les Landes Regional Park has emphasized the themeof historical transformation in building two “ecomusees.”The best known of these ecomuseums, at Marquezea Sabres, includes a reconstruction of the architecture,crafts, and such daily activities as milling, baking, veg-etable gardening, and poultry raising that were part ofLandaise life in the nineteenth century. The ecomuseumis equally concerned with the genetic conservation of localdomesticated plant and animal species. The ecomuseumat Luxey emphasizes the old methods of pine resin extrac-tion and distillation prior to the petrochemical industry.49

The Marqueze Ecomuseum also provides a deeper levelof environmental education to the students and tourists,who usually assume that the pines of Les Landes havealways been there. Three additional schools of environ-mental education emphasizing the natural and culturalhistory of Les Landes for groups of primary, secondary,and university level students have also been developedas regional park projects at Saugnac, Teich, and Graoux.At Saugnac, for example, an old school has been reno-vated and accommodations developed for short coursesoffered throughout the year. The pedagogical center atTeich employs a team including an ecologist, a geogra-pher, and a naturalist in a program that emphasizes theecology and ornithology of the Teich delta. The centerat Graoux is situated on the Leyre River and emphasizesthe link between environmental education and intensiveoutdoor activities.50

The Leyre and Petit Leyre Rivers were of great culturalimportance for Les Landes, for, as forested galleries ofdeciduous trees in the original desert and later pine for-est, they provided lines of transport and communicationalong which small communities or “quartiers” had grownup based on localized agriculture and grazing. Over time,mills, factories, and other uses have severely degradedthe water quality and ecology of the rivers, which havebecome choked with silt and undesirable vegetation andsuffered a severe decline in fish populations. The cre-ation of the regional park and the concern of societies oflocal fishermen has led to major cleanup activities on theriver systems during the 1980s and a program of habi-tat restoration that is now coordinated under a long-termriver basin management plan. Together with preservationof bird habitat in the Teich delta at the mouth of the LeyreRiver, this has been a major success story for Les LandesRegional Natural Park.51

Comparative studies of conservation implementationin British National Parks and the Parcs NaturelsRegionaux

The following section compares the Volcans d’AuvergneRegional Natural Park with British national parks in


Wales, and the Normandie-Maine Regional National Parkwith the Brecon Beacons National Park in Wales.

The Volcans d’ Auvergne Park encloses the high-est mountains of the Massif Central, including the vol-canic peaks of Mont Dore (6,186 ft) and Plomb du Can-tal (6,094 ft). The park boundary follows the moun-tain belt from northwest of Clermont-Ferrand almost toAurillac to the southwest. Created in 1977, the parkencloses 346,000 hectares, which include 128 communesand 91,600 inhabitants (in 1984).52 Given the spectaculargeology of the young volcanic mountains, national parkstatus might seem appropriate, but undoubtedly popula-tion size, degree of utilization of the area for farming,transhumance, recreation and tourism, and, above all,the desire of local inhabitants for economic assistance toa depressed area designated a LFA, eventually led to thechoice of a regional natural park. Massive migration of theAuvergne population to Paris since the nineteenth centuryhas left a half-abandoned countryside and a serious unem-ployment problem compoundedby farm modernization.53

Thus, the major objective of the regional park is “todevelop the region in order to maintain sufficient econom-ic and cultural activity to incite inhabitants to remain inthe country, to protect and reclaim the exceptional naturaland architectural patrimony, and to welcome and initiatevisitors, especially the young, in knowledge and respectfor nature and the human activities carried on within it.”54

Emphasis on nature education employs the use of a NatureCenter at Montlosier, an intricate system of paths in themountains, and roadside displays of information aboutthe geology and ecology of the region. Special facilitiesare also provided for winter cross-country skiing. In addi-tion, cultural centers displaying the making of cheese,honey, and other farm products, as well as stonemasonryand other local crafts, are intended to display the region’srootedness in nature and to promote local products.55

A study of abandoned dispersed communal grazinglands of the Cantal and Monts Domes areas of the Volcansd’ Auvergne Park undertaken by the French Departmentof Agriculture in the years immediately following cre-ation of the park showed that extensive sections of theselands had reverted to brush and forest cover.56 For exam-ple, sheep grazed on communal lands by the villages ofDomes had diminished since World War II to only sevenof 150 flocks. The Department of Agriculture recognizessuch shifts from grazing to fallow lands as a factor con-tributing to the weakening of the rural social fabric,a trendthat needs to be reversed in order to maintain healthy ruralcommunities. Thus, the major objective of the Departmentof Agriculture is the “reconquest” (reconquete)57 of fal-low lands within the park by working with other publicagencies and private organizations to re-introduce sheepgrazing into the tens of thousands of acres of fallow com-munal lands within the park boundaries. However, eventaking all local interests into account, including farmers,

hikers, hunters, private landowners, and environmental-ist partisans of afforestation, the Department of Agricul-ture found that their project would require constant andsustained pressure to overcome the inertia of a poorlyinformed and unmobilized rural population.58

A more recent study that emphasizes the Volcansd’ Auvergne Regional Park was undertaken by Mal-colm Smith, in which he compares conflicts betweenagriculture and nature conservation in LFAs included inWelsh national parks and French regional parks. Smith’smonograph describes the agriculture-conservation con-flict within the framework of a detailed analysis of theimpact of Council Directive 75/268 (“On mountain andhill farming and farming in certain less-favored areas”)and other directives of the EEC CAP upon LFAs in Walesand the Auvergne.59

Directive 75/268, the LFA directive, is aimed at sus-taining agriculture in relatively unproductive agrarianregions in order to maintain at least minimum rural pop-ulations and social structures, which explains the generalpolicy of the PNR and French Department of Agriculture,as described above. The maintenance of farming in moun-tain and upland areas is thus a means of “protecting thecountryside” to prevent erosion, preserve tourism, and toprevent areas from becoming “wildernesses” due to pop-ulation decline. A major issue considered by Smith is theindifference of the EEC and CAP to nature conservationand the question of whether CAP support to agriculturein LFAs should require increased productivity (throughgreater mechanization and expansion by filling wetlands,removal of forest and brush cover, etc.) or simply supportless productive yet more ecologically sound traditionalagricultural practices.

Smith demonstrates that CAP support that has empha-sized increased productivity of grazing and dairy farmswithin the LFAs of UK national parks in Wales has causedunprecedented environmental degradation, including thewidespread loss of broad-leaved woods due to increasedupland grazing, damage to and loss of wetlands, andthe loss of hedges and stone walls as habitat. The long-term implications of these “habitat losses for individualspecies, if the present trends continue, are likely to bedisastrous.”60

A comparison of recent land use in LFAs in Wales andthe Auvergne, focusing on the department of Cantal inthe Auvergne and the county of Powys in Wales, leadsSmith to the following conclusion: “Although the Frenchuplands are nationally important for such commodities asbeef, milk, and cheese, the forms and intensity of landmanagement have changed relatively little with time. Ingeneral, agriculture and nature conservation in the Frenchuplands are not in conflict, certainly not on any significantscale. This is markedly not the result of any official poli-cies, nor generally because of a widespread concern for,and understanding of, the environment by the agricultural


population. Rather it is the unplanned result of the mainte-nance of a generally traditional form of agriculture whichis not overexploitive of its fundamental resources.”61

Although, as Smith acknowledges, the two regionalparks in the Auvergne, Parcs des Volcans d’Auvergne andLivradois-Forez, have as their main purposes, tourism,landscape and architectural preservation, and econom-ic stimulation, they nevertheless encourage traditionalagriculture and land management that “favors mainte-nance of the status quo, conserving wildlife habitats asa consequence.”62 As a result, in the Auvergne uplandslevels of livestock grazing are moderate, fertilizer useis limited, drainage of wetlands is rare, and restrictionsof soil and climate constrain ploughing and reseeding ofgrasslands. Also, complex ownership patterns and lim-ited remembrementcause agricultural under-utilizationin some areas, and preservation of habitat for huntingis locally important.63 Furthermore, grazing is usuallyexcluded in French woodlands and forests and regenera-tion of woodlands is not prevented as it is in the UK, in partbecause of the needs of local farmers and communes forfirewood.64 Finally, Smith concludes that effects on indi-vidual species are minor, based upon the fact that no sig-nificant declines in breeding birds associated with farm-land have occurred since the 1936 Inventory of FrenchBirds.65

It is encouraging to be reassured that the Volcansd’Auvergne Regional Park is able to sustain relativelystabilized habitats in fragmented humanized ecosystemsof the most spectacular mountains in the Massif Central,and perhaps surprising that environmental conservationis more successful, even if inadvertently so, than in thenational parks of the UK. The conservation successes ofthe PNR relative to British national parks appears to bemore the result of peasant attitudes and land manage-ment practices dating from the feudal period than frommore benign attitudes toward nature on the part of theFrench. The ineffectiveness of CAP subsidies in reclaim-ing semi-wild habitat has benefited the French environ-ment while the British have efficiently destroyed their pas-toral wildlife habitat with the aid of greater CAP financialsupport for LFA farmers.

In contrast to the mountainous regional parks of theAuvergne and Morvan or the flat lowland of Les Landes,the Parc Naturel Regional de Normandie-Maine is locatedin a region of rolling hills, which includes bocage, anold traditional land-use pattern of hedgerows and smallfields. The bocage is interspersed with forest and copses ofbeech, oak, chestnut, pine and spruce where the stag or reddeer still survives. Created in 1975, the Normandie-MainePark includes 234,000 hectares overlying 151 communesand a population of 90,000.The provincial city of Alençonand the thermal springs resort town of Bagnoles de l’Ornewere among the earliest protagonists for the park.Alençon

lies outside the park, bounded by the park to the north,west, and east.66

The stated objectives of the park charter are to main-tain the local quality of life, to increase local agriculturaland other economic activity, and to experiment with orig-inal ideas for development. Intercommunal cooperationis not easy to achieve in this region of microclimates andsubtle cultural differences, but the vast majority of com-munes were in favor of park status. Increased exploita-tion of the Andaines Forest around Bagnoles de l’Orneand other forested areas for carpentry, cabinet-making,and the construction of wood-frame houses is a majorpart of the regional development supported by the park.Although dairy farming is the dominant agricultural use,apple and pear orchards have also received strong sup-port because the making of cider, perry, calvados, andother beverages are an important source of supplementalincome to local farmers and the orchards were consideredworth preserving as an intrinsic part of the bocage land-scape. The raising of Percheron draft horses is also locallyimportant and they have been celebrated at local fairs andused for tourist caravans.67

Building upon the earlier work of Aitchison, Smith,Finch, and others, Janet Dwyer has published a com-parative study of the Normandie-Maine Regional Parkand the Brecon Beacons National Park in Wales, focus-ing upon the effects of different rural policy structuresupon implementation of conservation policy.68 The twoparks were chosen for the study on the basis of suchsimilarities as high unemployment in small family farm-ing, economic underdevelopment, low population density“and difficult natural conditions which have shaped theevolution of a predominantly extensive pattern of agri-cultural land use.”69 Despite the facts that Brecon Bea-cons is in an upland area compared to the low hills ofsouthern Normandy and that the mix of sheep and beeffarming in the Welsh park differs from the dairy farm-ing of Normandie-Maine, Dwyer reasoned that the manysimilarities between the two parks’ merited comparativeanalysis.

The British national parks are generally located inupland areas including a mix of farming, grazing, andsome heath and woodlands. The system was imposed after1949 as a “ ‘top-down’ hierarchical framework, head-ed by the National Parks Commission (now the Coun-tryside Commission) and individually controlled by amixture of national appointees and local governmentrepresentatives.”70 In contrast, the PNR is a “bottom-up” system dependent upon local rather than central ini-tiatives to achieve their objectives. Both systems havemanifested major policy performance problems related topolicy structure. On the one hand, the British parks havealienated local farmers and communities (whose coop-eration is needed to carry out conservation policy) by


relatively ignoring them in the park planning phase, andon the other the PNR has seen its conservation objectivesundermined by the strong economic orientation of localpark committee members. The ecological consequencesof these partly failed policies have been habitat loss andfarmland degeneration at Brecon Beacons and the loss ofhedgerows and orchards as integral elements in the bocagein Normandie-Maine, which provide valuable habitat forbirds, plants, insects, and small animals, as well as woodfor local farmers and communes.

Dwyer recognizes the constructive value of thePNR emphasis “onconservation through appropriatedevelopment” 71 (emphasis in original) in drawing on localtalent and initiative. Her account of two Normandie-Maine Park projects, one emphasizing maintenance oforchards, the other promoting hedgerow planting inresponse to the loss of hedgerows related toremembre-mentin the 1960s, shows that such conservation-orientedprojects are usually unsuccessful if local authorities arenot supervised by a strong central agency. Orchards andhedgerows have continued to disappear as local pro-grams have lost direction. Aitchison’s earlier review ofNormandie-Maine Park concluded that the park’s Steer-ing Council

: : : has tended to shift its emphasis away from the con-servation objectives enshrined in the original charterand towards the simple supply of local football pitches,swimming pools and arts and crafts events. The bene-fits of Park expenditure have therefore been distributedamong fewer people and for less clear public environ-mental gain than was originally intended. Staff whowere employed to pursue the Charter’s objectives withhopes of stimulating new environmentally beneficialcommunityprojects found that their plans were increas-ingly at odds with the Council.72

Thus, the problem ofquis custodes ipsos custodes(whowill watch the watchers themselves) emerges as themajor obstacle to the implementation of nature conserva-tion policies within Normandie-Maine and other regionalparks. On the positive side, however, Dwyer tells us thatthe problems of park management at the local level wererecognized by the central government in the mid-1980s,which led to legislation that requires national surveillanceof PNR funding and performance, allowing funding fromthe Ministry of the Environment only for those activi-ties of which they approve (Decret du 25 avril 1988).73

Also, the Regional Natural Park designation is subject toreview and appraisal for renewal every ten years, whichmeans that parks failing to carry out Charter objectivesof protection of the natural and cultural environment maylose their status as Regional Natural Parks. Dwyer con-cludes that the British and French park systems can bothimprove implementation of conservation policy by com-

plementing their respective “top down” and “bottom up”approaches with improved liaison and local participationin the British system and increased scrutiny and centralgovernmental control in the French system.74

Policy changes and conflicts

The Decree of 1988, which more stringently enforcedthe use of funds for environmental conservation, was fol-lowed by a period of questioning and dialogue concern-ing the relative importance of regional economic devel-opment and environmental conservation in the PNR. Amajor conference held during the summer of 1991 underthe title “Horizon 2001” brought together the presidentsand directors of all the regional parks along with envi-ronmentalists such as Brice Lalonde, administrators ofthe Federation of Natural Parks and the Ministry of theEnvironment and other national agencies, and PresidentMitterrand himself. The presentations and debates wereorganized by the National Federation of Natural Parkswith the intention of clarifying the goals of park char-ters regarding regional development and preservation ofthe natural and cultural patrimony. The Minister of theEnvironment, having reaffirmed the PNR objectives of“developing a countryside while at the same time pro-tecting the environment,” specified that the force of lawwas needed to make the charters work. Mitterrand addedthat the development and planning structures of the PNRrepresented “one of the best ways of integrating the pro-tection of nature into our habits and in our lives” andthat “in organizing and managing in a more exacting way,even more rigorous than the present Parks, you will be anexample for the nation.”75

The desire to strengthen and give the force of law to thecharters of the PNR expressed at the “Horizon 2001” con-ference resulted in Law No. 93-24 being adopted by theNational Assembly on January 8, 1993. Inserted into therural code as Article L. 244-1, this amendment begins:“The regional natural parks cooperate with policies ofenvironmental protection, land management, social andeconomic development and public education. They con-stitute a privileged framework of activities led by publiccollectives in favor or the preservation of the countrysideand the natural and cultural patrimony.” The Parc Charterdetermines for the Park territory the directions to be takenfor protection, reclamation, and management of the ter-ritory, and the measures allowing them to be carried out.It requires an elaborate plan developed after completionof an inventory of the patrimony indicating the differentPark zones and their use, accompanied by a documentdetermining the goals and principal bases for protectionof park territory by rural management structures.76 Thearticle of law goes on to affirm the local basis for gaining


membership in the PNR and that the park plans must becompatible with the area’s urban plans.

Thus, for the first time in a law text, the precise natureof the vocation and mission of the Regional Natural Parkshas been defined. Prior to this enactment, the park charterspossessed only the enforcement power of moral engage-ment, but the judicial effect of the new law is likely to leadto coercive measures that guarantee that nature conser-vation policies advanced in the charters are consistentlyimplemented under the guidance of the Federation desParcs Naturels Regionaux. Unfortunately, the goals forenvironmentally responsible management of the region-al parks are in contradiction with traditional peasantattitudes toward land-use management and economicdemands for destructively intensive production (or farm-land abandonment) dictated by the agrarian policies of theCAP.

Regarding abandonment, the French are generally farmore interested in maintaining an optimal level of utiliza-tion of their marginal agricultural lands than in allowingthem to revert to the wild. Their major purpose in continu-ing to farm such relatively unproductiveagricultural landsis to maintain the social fabric of small farming communi-ties in less favored and isolated areas of the country. Also,their marginal food-producing lands may one day be ofgreat strategic importance given a period of warfare oran unforeseen breakdown in the functioning of the CAP.Even a Chernobyl-type nuclear disaster in France couldradically alter the relative value of LFAs.A recent study ofthe attitudes of French farmers toward the present practiceof farm subsidies (typically 1500 francs from the EEC and800F in addition from the French government per hectare)to allow lands to go fallow (under the CAP) indicated astrong consensus of farmers opposed to the practice. Inaddition to disquiet over the loss of communities androads to “wilderness,” the farmers expressed concern forthe loss of aesthetic amenity (by the disappearance ofviews as natural and planted forests grow up), fire haz-ard, the spread of undesirable weedy plants to contiguousfarmlands, and the general impression of abandoned farmregions as disordered, abandoned, and dead. A numberof farmers also commented on the destructive effect onthe landscape of more efficient, mechanized agricultureforced upon them by the policy of European agriculturalself-sufficiency encouraged by the EU.77

France is only one of many nations whose LFA farmersare being forced off the land by the high productivity ofmechanized lowland agriculture, thereby destroying thesocial fabric and traditions of rural landscapes and causinglarge areas to undergo abandonment, “freezes” in fallowland, and afforestation, often in ecologically undesirablemonocultural evergreen plantations. In addition, vacationand second home development over time may prevent thereturn of many of these areas to agricultural use if andwhen future demand occurs. Within the EU 57.8 percent

of the land is managed as agricultural and more than halfof that land is situated in LFAs.78

Attempts to ecologically enlighten policy makers ofthe EU have thus far proved fruitless, given their acceptedpremise that: “The ecological character or polluting meth-ods of production matter little; the only thing that countsis to succeed in producing in the least costly manner.”79

If the EU will not even acknowledge the need for amore ecological and sustainable agriculture, one mustconclude that little overall environmental leadership canbe expected from them in the years ahead. Meanwhile thePNR, British National Parks, and other management plansthat consider environmental conservation within LFAs inEurope are valuable and necessary ways to mitigate thesocioeconomic and ecological impacts resulting from theconstant pressure for increased agricultural production inorder that Europeans “obtain a more interesting price onItalian pastas in Denmark, or German beer in Spanishsupermarkets or on French cheese in Greece.”80

The mining of primary soils (due to overuse and ero-sion), pollution of ground and surface waters by fertil-izers and pesticides, high energy demands for machineagriculture, and increasing labor problems accompanyingeconomic rationalization are all discounted as ephemeralexternalities within this narrow perspective. The PNR isonly one of a variety of programsthat directly or indirectlysubsidize marginal European agriculture as a long-termresource. However, what makes the PNR unique is itsincreasingly strong emphasis on environmental conser-vation in coordination with moderate economic develop-ment. Despite the failure of some regional parks to imple-ment the conservation objectives of park charters, theauthors of the Welsh comparative studies concluded thatthe PNR has surpassed the British national park system inachieving its conservation objectives to the extent possi-ble in the real world of global economic competition andhomo oeconomicus, the twentieth century businessman,which now includes the farmer forced to consider prof-itability above all other objectives in the course of mak-ing a living from the land. The ideals, goals, and recentpolicies affecting PNR charters appear to have had anappreciable moderating effect upon the exploitative atti-tudes of the agrarian populations of at least some regionalparks and to have contributed significantly towards rais-ing the level of awareness of the general public regardingenvironmental problems in rural areas. Also, the recentconferences and legislation described above suggest thatthe conservation functions of the regional parks will bemore uniformly and stringently enforced in the future.

Conclusion

The major difference between American and Frenchgreenline parks is that the PNR is designed specifically


to manage dominantly“marginal” agricultural landswith special ecological, recreational, and aesthetic values,whereas American greenline parks have focused more onscenic and ecologic values such as those found in theAdirondack Mountains or the Columbia Gorge. Pastorallandscapes in the USA that could become greenline parkscomparable to those managed under the PNR include,for example, the Connecticut Valley and other parts ofNew England, the Hudson River Valley, and parts of thenorthern Midwest and Pacific Northwest. Greenline parksare the best available means of preserving these agrarianregions from the destructiveness of uncontrolled develop-ment.

The PNR provides the USA with a better model fordeveloping greenline parks in pastoral regions than theBritish national park system because, as Janet Dwyerhas shown, it is a “bottom up” rather than a “top down”system. Such a system requires that access to manage-ment programs be made available at the national level forthose regions that actively desire to implement ecologi-cally responsible land-use planning and management intheir most valuable “marginal” pastoral lands.Particularlyin the USA, given our strong resistance to governmentalcontrol and the rise to prominenceof the “wise use” move-ment and the takings issue, this approach is far preferableto imposing parks upon regions from above. Furthermore,in an age of diminishing federal and state resources, it isimperative that conservation and preservation be accom-plished chiefly through land-use management to comple-ment limited large-scale acquisition of public lands by thefederal government. Within American greenline parks,ecologically and scenically strategic parcels have beenand will continue to be acquired with limited resourcesfrom both federal and state funds and private land trustssuch as the Trust for Public Land.81 In addition, conser-vation easements on privately owned lands are becominga valuable and popular way of integrating conservationpractices into greenline parks.82 What remains to be doneis to further apprise the American public of the precedentsfor greenline parks that already exist here and abroad andto continue building our own national “bottom up” sys-tem of pastoral parks in agrarian regions comparable tothose of the PNR. Knowledge and awareness of green-line parks in the USA lags far behind awareness of thenational parks. Increased visibility of greenlining as analternative conservation method would encourage moreregions to pursue greenline policies even if no nationalgreenline park system is created.

Finally, a major point of this study has been that thepeople of rural France are warily moving towards a landethic that is rooted in the tradition of respect for patrimony.This shift in attitudes away from rigid economic utilitar-ianism is well documented in recent issues ofParcs, theadministrative voice of the Federation des Parcs NaturelsRegionaux de France. Rather than imposing rigid laws

from state agencies, representatives of the PNR haveattempted to foster a cooperative, dialectical approachto the creation of park charters. Community discussionof environmental inventories and management tools suchas atlases of ecologically and aesthetically sensitive areasis a learning experience that implicitly teaches ecologicaland aesthetic values of landscapes as well as sustainableresource use. It is at least a tentative first step and perhapsas close to an environmental ethic as we can get in thereal world.

Notes

1. Marjorie R. Corbett (ed.),Greenline Parks: Land Conser-vation Trends for the Eighties and Beyond(Washington,DC: National Parks and Conservation Association, 1983),“Definitions,” preceding title page. Awareness of the cru-cial importance of ecologically sound land-use managementpolicies on agricultural lands has grown slowly in the USAas well as in Europe. The implications of heavy pesticide usefor biodiversity were clearly spelled out by Rachel Carson inSilent Spring(1962, Greenwich, CT: Fawcett Publications,1970). A third of a century later, a report published by PhilipW. Gerard of the National Biological Service,AgriculturalPractices, Farm Policy, and the Conservation of BiologicalDiversity (Washington, DC: US Department of the Interi-or, National Biological Service, Biological Science Report4, June 1995), shows that the US Conservation ReserveProgram has virtually ignored the needs of wildlife and bio-diversity on agricultural lands to the present day.

2. Charles Little,Hope for the Land(New Brunswick: RutgersUniversity Press, 1992), p. 170.

3. Little, Hope for the Land, p. 153.4. Little, Hope for the Land, p. 153.5. Aldo Leopold,A Sand County Almanac(1949, New York:

Sierra Club/Ballantine Books, 1970), p. 245.6. Leopold,A Sand County Almanac, p. 249.7. Leopold,A Sand County Almanac, p. 249.8. It should hardly come as a surprise that Western Europeans

are better stewards of their utilized lands than Americansare of theirs. Although Western Europeans have destroyedall but tiny remnants of their original wilderness, they pos-sess a relatively long history of managing their farm, forest,and grazing lands. Trial and error has led gradually to stew-ardship practices. Early Europeans, however, particularly inthe fragile ecosystems of the Mediterranean basin, causedmassive environmental degradation by deforestation, over-grazing, and poor farming practices even during classicalantiquity. See J. Donald Hughes,Pan’s Travail: Environ-mental Problems of the Ancient Greeks and Romans(Bal-timore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), especial-ly pp. 130–148. Concerning ecological preservation withinthe PNR, see “Preserver la biodiversite,” Paris: Federationdes Parcs Naturels Regionaux de France,Parcs Naturels deFrance, No. 21 (February 1994), pp. 7–14, and “Agriculture-environnement une nouvelle donne?” also inParcs, No. 19(June 1993), pp. 7–14. These articles and interviews reflect


a rapidly developing awareness of the need to protect bio-diversity on the pastoral landscapes of the PNR. Inventoriesof species, natural reserves, and protective management car-ried out by Federation des Parcs staff through education offarmers and other land users is the consensual approach tothe problem. This approach is discussed at length inParcs,No. 25 (June 1995), pp. 7–13.

9. Two useful critiques of agricultural practices under the CAPare Richard Cottrell,The Sacred Cow: The Folly of Europe’sFood Mountains(London: Grafton Books, 1987), especial-ly pp. 11–27, 155–181 and Richard Body,Farming in theClouds(London: Temple Smith, 1984). A general accountof French agriculture under the CAP and GATT (GeneralAgreement on Tariffs and Trade) is included in Ronald Tier-sky, France in the New Europe(Belmont, CA: WadsworthPublishing Co., 1994), pp. 158–162 and 209–217.

10. Joseph M. Petulla,American Environmental History, 2ndedn. (Columbus, OH: Merrill Publishing Company, 1988),p. 342.

11. John Ardagh,France Today(London: Penguin Books,1988), p. 202.

12. Ardagh,France Today, p. 200.13. Ardagh,France Today, p. 202. Also see John Ardagh,Rural

France(Salem, NH: Salem House, 1984).14. Ardagh,France Today, p. 205. Even at the small size of

eighty acres, the average French farm is larger than those ofall other EEC countries except the United Kingdom.

15. Ardagh,France Today, p. 209.16. Ardagh,France Today, pp. 202–207.17. Christopher Finch,Approaches to Integrating Rural Devel-

opment in Europe(Aberystwyth, Wales: Arkleton Trust,1987), p. 4.

18. Finch,Approaches to Integrating Rural Development, pp.4–5.

19. Ardagh,Rural France, p. 192.20. George W. Hoffman (ed.),Europe in the 1990s: A Geo-

graphic Analysis(New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1990),p. 330.

21. Stephanie Pincetl, “Some origins of French environmental-ism: an exploration,”Forest and Conservation History37(April 1993): 80–81.

22. Ardagh,Rural France, p. 192.23. Clive Ponting,A Green History of the World(New York:

Penguin Books, 1993), pp. 123–125. Alfred Crosby,Eco-logical Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986) pp. 295–308.

24. Leo Marx,The Machine in the Garden(New York: OxfordUniversity Press, 1967), pp. 3–33. Marx has traced thetheme of the herdsman, the literal pastoralist or shepherd asa “liminal figure” or mediator between society and nature,from ancient Near Eastern and Classical poetry to the “pas-toral” literature and art of early modern Europe, and finallyto American nineteenth and twentieth century authors whoappealed to a life closer to nature in rebellion against indus-trialization and an expanding technological society. FromtheEcloguesof Virgil to the shepherd’s poems or pastoral of1550–1750 to Thoreau’sWaldenand the novels of Melville,Hawthorne, Twain, Hemingway, and others, Marx recog-

nizes a common element of the need for psychological aswell as material retreat to nature in the form of the middlelandscape of the countryside, the part of nature made benignthrough the activities of farming and grazing but retainingenough of wildness to serve as an antidote to the alienationand corruption associated with urban life.

25. See, for example, Marcel Schneider,Jean-Jacques Rousseauet l’espoir ecologiste(Paris: Editions Pygmalion, 1978),Gilbert LaFreniere, “Rousseau and the European roots ofenvironmentalism,”Environmental History Review14 (Win-ter 1990): 41–72, and Stephanie Pincetl, “Some origins ofFrench environmentalism: an exploration.”

26. Pincetl, “Some origins of French environmentalism,” p. 85.27. Catherine et Bernard Desjeux,Les Parcs Naturels Regionaux

de France: Campagnes Vivantes(Nonette: Editions Creer,1984), p. 7.

28. Desjeux,Les Parcs Naturels Regionaux, pp. 8–9.29. Federation des Parcs Naturels de France et Ministere de

l’ Environnement,Les Parcs Naturels Regionaux et la Pro-tection de la Nature(La Ferte-Mace: Presses de la Compedit-Beauregard, 1982), p. 8.

30. Rene Auclair et al.,Reserves et Parcs Naturels(Cannes:Publications de l’Ecole Moderne Française, 1990), p. 8.

31. Federation des Parcs Naturels de France etc.,Les ParcsRegionaux et la Protection de la Nature, pp. 8–9.

32. Federation des Parcs Naturels de France etc.,Les ParcsRegionaux et la Protection de la Nature, p. 24.

33. J. W. Aitchison, “The National Regional Parks of France,”Landscape Research9 (1984): 6, and Janet Dwyer,A Com-parative Study of Agriculture and Rural Conservation Poli-cies in the UK and France(Aberystwyth: University ofWales, doctoral dissertation, June 1991), p. 225.

34. Aitchison, “The National Regional Parks of France,” p. 6.35. Ministere de l’ Environnement, Ministere de l’Agricul-

ture, et Federation des Parcs Naturels de France,LesParcs Naturels Regionaux et le Developpement Agricole(LaFerte-Mace: Presses de la Compedit-Beauregard, 1982) andFederation des Parcs Naturels de France, etc.,Les ParcsRegionaux et la Protection de la Nature, pp. 8–9, 48–51,54–55.

36. Federation des Parcs Naturels de France, etc.,Les ParcsRegionaux et la Protection de la Nature, pp. 13–21.



39. Aitchison, “The National Regional Parks of France,” pp.6–8, andParcs Naturels de France, No. 25 (June 1995),p. 1.

40. Aitchison, “The National Regional Parks of France,” p. 6.41. Desjeux,Les Parcs Naturels Regionaux, pp. 119–120.42. Desjeux,Les Parcs Naturels Regionaux, pp. 124–125.43. Desjeux,Les Parcs Naturels Regionaux, p. 121.44. Federation des Parcs Naturels de France,Parcs, No. 17

(October 1992), pp. 10–11.45. Desjeux,Les Parcs Naturels Regionaux, pp. 70–71, 74.46. Federation des Parcs Naturels de France, etc.,Les Parcs

Regionaux et la Protection de la Nature, p. 33.


47. Desjeux,Les Parcs Naturels Regionaux, p. 71; Ardagh,Rural France, pp. 163, 192.

48. Ardagh,Rural France, p. 192.49. Desjeux,Les Parcs Naturels Regionaux, pp. 72–74.50. “Parcs et pedagogie:Ecoles sans murs,”Parcs, No. 5 (Octo-

ber 1988), pp. 2–4.51. “Plaidoyer pour les rivieres,”Parcs, No. 10 (June 1990), pp.

6–7.52. Aitchison, “The National Regional Parks of France,” p. 6.53. Ardagh,Rural France, pp. 113–119.54. Desjeux,Les Parcs Naturels Regionaux, p. 167.55. Desjeux,Les Parcs Naturels Regionaux, p. 167–172.56. Ministere de l’ Environnement, etc.,Les Parcs Naturels

Regionaux et le Developpement Agricole, p. 23.57. Ministere de l’ Environnement, etc.,Les Parcs Naturels

Regionaux et le Developpement Agricole, p. 25.58. Ministere de l’ Environnement, etc.,Les Parcs Naturels

Regionaux et le Developpement Agricole, pp. 23–28.59. Malcolm Smith,Agriculture and Nature Conservation in

Conflict: The Less Favored Areas of France and the UK(Aberystwyth, Wales: Arkleton Trust, 1985), pp. 5–6.

60. Smith,Agriculture and Nature Conservation, p. 52.61. Smith,Agriculture and Nature Conservation, p. 46.62. Smith,Agriculture and Nature Conservation, p. 17.63. Smith,Agriculture and Nature Conservation, p. 18.Remem-

brementhas had a substantial impact on nature conservationin lowland areas, but far less impact on upland areas. Person-al observation and consultation with the private environmen-tal institution,Auvergne et Nature, led Smith to conclude:“In the Auvergne, the major agriculture/conservation con-flict is clearly in the plains, especially the extensive limagnenorth of Clermont, where intensive cereal and crop produc-tion has taken over from a former bocage (hedge and pasture)landscape” (p. 46).Remembrementin the uplands is mainlyconstrained by cost, which is three times greater in uplandsthan in the lowlands (p. 49).

64. Smith,Agriculture and Nature Conservation, p. 49.65. Smith,Agriculture and Nature Conservation, p. 51.66. Desjeux,Les Parcs Naturels Regionaux, pp. 134–135.67. Desjeux,Les Parcs Naturels Regionaux, pp. 136–141.

68. Janet Dwyer, “Structural and evolutionary effects uponconservation policy performance: comparing a UK nationaland a French regional park,”Journal of Rural Studies7/3(1991): 165–175. The article is a summary of the Ph.D.dissertation cited above in note 29.

69. Dwyer, “Structural and Evolutionary Effects,” p. 267.70. Dwyer, “Structural and Evolutionary Effects,” p. 268.71. Dwyer, “Structural and Evolutionary Effects,” p. 271.72. Dwyer, “Structural and Evolutionary Effects,” p. 272.73. Dwyer, “Structural and Evolutionary Effects,” p. 273.74. Dwyer, “Structural and Evolutionary Effects,” pp. 273–274.75. Federation des Parcs Naturels de France, “Les Parcs Naturels

Regionaux de l’ an 2001,”Parcs, No. 14 (October 1991), p.17.

76. Federation des Parcs Naturels de France, “Le nouveau droitdes Parcs Naturels Regionaux,” Parcs, No. 18 (February1993), p. 1.

77. Jean Niqueux, “Impact des friches sur le paysage,”CombatNature(Revue des AssocationsEcologiques et de Defensede l’Environnement), No. 97 (May 1992), pp. 22–25.

78. Wolfgang Fruhauf and Thomas Giesinger, “Jardin commu-nautaire ou industrie?,”Courrier International: Europe 93,Alerte a l’ecologie, Hors serie No. 2 (May 1992), p. 35.

79. Fruhauf and Giesinger, “Jardin communautaire,” p. 36.80. Fruhauf and Giesinger, “Jardin communautaire,” p. 36.81. Robert Mason, “Defining and protecting rural environments

in the USA,” inContemporary Rural Systems in Transition,vol. 2, ed. I. R. Bowler, C. R. Bryant, and M. D. Nellis(Wallingford, UK: CAB International, 1992), pp. 131–137.See also Rutherford H. Platt,Land Use Control: Geography,Law, and Public Policy(Englewood Cliffs, NJ: PrenticeHall, 1991), pp. 362–374.

82. Eve Endicott (ed.),Land Conservation Through Public/ Pri-vate Partnerships(Washington, DC: Island Press, 1993).

Address for correspondence:Gilbert F. La Freniere, WillametteUniversity, 900 State Street, Salem, OR 97301, USAPhone: (503) 370-6487; Fax: (503) 370-6773E-mail: [email protected]

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Greenline parks in France: Les Parcs Naturels Régionaux