From communication to public perceptions: diversity of roles and values in a planted forest. The case of the Landes of Gascony (France)

The Landes of Gascony forest, in the South West of France, is the most important cultivated forest in Europe, mainly planted of maritime pines for industrial purpose in the second part of the 19th century on a sparsely inhabited and swampy area (in French, 'landes' means 'moors'). This area is now an attractive place with seaside tourism on the Atlantic Coast and spectacular urbanization process whose consequence is development of forest recreational frequentation and the multiplication of wildland urban interfaces (WUI) increasing potential land-use conflicts and forest fire risks. In this context, the aim of this paper is to analyze communication policies on Landes forest and evolution of forest perceptions by population and non-forest stakeholders (tourism sector, public authorities, etc.). As Internet is now an essential means of communication, we decided to analyze the communication on the Web: who talks about the Landes forest? On which forest role does one insist? We made a content analysis of 50 websites indexed by Google after a keyword research (in French). We compared the communication on Internet with a survey based on semi-structured interviews of 60 inhabitants living in WUI and 60 tourists walking or riding in forest areas. The aim of the survey was to evaluate public knowledge and perception of the Landes forest: what do they like / dislike? What roles do they assign to this forest and particularly, what do they know on forestry? We show that the communication on the forest, even if it's a planted one, is not dominated by the forestry sector. While forestry institutions insist on forest economical and ecological roles (water resource regulation, carbon sequestration, etc.) tourism sector and, partly, public authorities communicate on the Landes forest amenities, selling to visitors a personal experience of "wilderness" insisting on aesthetics and cultural values. The comparison with people answers shows that population perceptions reflect more touristic messages than forester's communication