The old salt pans of Camargue

The Camargue is a vast territory at the mouth of the Rhone River. The old salt pans are located in the southeast of the Rhone delta, in the Camargue Regional Natural Park and in a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve. Beginning in the 1950s, a coastal area of more than 6,500 ha in the communes of Arles and Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer was developed for the industrial production of salt, and equipped with a levee to limit marine intrusions and to create evaporation and salt concentration basins. In a difficult economic context, the Société des Salins du Midi sold part of the salt ponds to the Conservatoire du Littoral in 2011. Its main vocation then shifted from salt production to wetlands conservation. The managers of this territory (Camargue Regional Nature Park, Tour du Valat and the National Society for the Protection of Nature), under the aegis of the Conservatoire du Littoral, are committed to the implementation of an adaptive management strategy for this territory. Today, the coastal levee of the former Camargue salt marshes, which has breached several times in the past, is no longer maintained in order to restore coastal dynamics. The adaptive management of this environment is presented as a Nature-based Solution insofar as it contributes to the management of the risk of marine submersion by combating coastal erosion and promoting the reconnection of various lagoons, as well as the restoration of a biodiversity typical of a brackish environment. Nevertheless, this management orientation is subject to controversy in the Camargue territory.

Here you can find a brochure (in french) edited by the Tour du Valat detailling NbS in the Camargue area:

Below is a video (in french) presenting the project.