Pottier, Aude <br/><br/>
The Forest of the Landes de Gascogne, a Natural Heritage? The Foresters’Viewpoint 

 -  2014.<br/>							 
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<br/><br/> Among the French forests, the Landes forest stands out rather owing to its surface area, history and the strong tendency to consider it as "unremarkable". Dedicated to production, the Landes de Gascogne became a symbol of the productive vocation of forest spaces. Consequently the forest was often criticised for that very reason: its exclusive end-use. Its extensive surface area combined with its intensive exploitation are indeed often the subject of heavy criticism pointing at the consequent poverty in terms of flora and fauna. Those remarks can even be used to question its designation as a forest and to highlight its apparent inability to hold any value other than its economic content. However, behind prejudices often displayed by external stakeholders, professional operators (public and private) show a different point of view on what is the core of their daily work and sometimes of their Life. Through the analysis of semi-directive interviews, the authors seek to understand the relationship forged between this professional category and its object through and beyond the "uniform". The objective of this article is to understand which values are given by those persons to their forest and to demonstrate how an artificial production-oriented forest can become a heritage shared between nature and culture, for those who work with it.