Photo : Concha AGERO / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Plaine des Maures
The Plaine des Maures is a national nature reserve in the Var, created by decree on 23 June 2009. It covers 5,276 hectares north of the Maures massif and touches five communes: La Garde-Freinet, Le Cannet-des-Maures, Le Luc-en-Provence, Les Mayons and Vidauban. The département's first reserve, it is considered the most important Provençal core for Hermann's tortoise, the only wild land tortoise in mainland France.
The territory combines oak woods, pine groves, grasslands, maquis, meadows, temporary pools and sandstone slabs, as well as two artificial lakes, Escarcets and Aurèdes. More than 130 protected plant species are recorded there, including about thirty orchids, but also the European pond turtle and the ocellated lizard. Large fires affected a large part of the reserve in August 2021. Since August 2022, its management has been provided by the Société nationale de protection de la nature. A path goes round Lac des Escarcets, marked by information panels, and allows a quiet discovery of this fragile environment.
