French Version
The purpose of the sites of the Conservatoire du Littoral is the protection of coastal and lake areas. Their public access is encouraged but is consistently limited by the vulnerability of each site. In addition to its land policy, primarily targeting sites of high ecological and landscape interest, the Conservatoire du Littoral is able, since 2002, to act directly upon the maritime public domain. This protection mode may overlap with other regulatory or contractual mechanisms.
Through land management, the 29 Conservatories of natural areas especially help to better understand, protect, manage and develop the natural and landscape heritage. They are involved in 2013 through a network of 2,498 sites covering 134,260 ha throughout the metropolitan area and the Reunion Island, including than 800 sites that benefit of a strong protection over the long term through acquisition and / or emphyteutic lease. Conservatories are also involved in the control of use, mainly by means of management agreements.
Conservatories also rely on the regulatory protection: 35% of their sites of intervention receive a protection status (National Park, National and Regional Nature Reserves, Sensitive Natural Area, biotope protection prefectoral order). Outside any regulatory prerogative, sites managed by the conservatories of natural areas fall under the UICN categories IV and V.
As part of the "Protected Areas Base", only the sites that are fully vested and / or under leasehold are taken into account, especially in the balance sheets and the geographical information database.
However, all the sites of intervention of the Conservatories (2,498 sites) are marked on the map below and can be downloaded from the Federation of the Conservatories of Natural spaces site.
The policy of sensitive natural areas (ENS) stems from the Law of July 18, 1985, which gives the departments the power to implement a policy in favor of sensitive natural areas, the nature and identification criteria of which are specified by each departmental council. In general, the ENS are likely to be of biological or landscape interest, to be fragile and/or threatened, to be subject to protection and management measures, and to be the place to discover natural resources.
The departments have a specific role in terms of biodiversity via their competence in terms of sensitive natural areas. They have two objectives:
The ENS policy is implemented on the territory through 3 tools:
Applicable texts
From a legislative point of view, the ENS tool is based on articles L113-8 to L113-14 and R113-15 to R113-18 of the urban planning code. The right of pre-emption in sensitive natural areas is based on articles L215-1 to L215-24 and R215-1 to R215-19 of the urban planning code.
