Photo : Regissierra / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)
Marais de Goulaine
Spread over all the former lands of the lordship of Goulaine, the marsh is now divided between Haute-Goulaine and Basse-Goulaine, Saint-Julien-de-Concelles, Le Loroux-Bottereau and La Chapelle-Heulin. It forms an area of 2,000 hectares where people live alongside exceptionally rare fauna and flora. The Goulaine marsh communicates with the Loire through the small Goulaine river that links the two.
Quite wild in appearance, the marsh was, until the French Revolution, the property of the Goulaine family. In the seventeenth century the Marquis Gabriel II de Goulaine had the first ports built. He also made contracts for draining the site, and planned and carried out the channelling of the Goulaine to the Loire. After the French Revolution, the marsh was shared out among the population, thus breaking up the Goulaine lands. The nineteenth century was marked by a small river traffic, in particular that of lime.
Today the marsh, owned by the surrounding communes, is being rehabilitated as heritage through a programme of ecological, natural and historical enhancement.
