History

The reserve was opened to the public in the autumn of 1972 and although its focus has shifted at various points in time, its overriding concern has always been to protect the reserve’s unique natural environments and the wild creatures that live there.

At the end of the 1960s, a group of local ornithologists (Pierre Davant, Pierre Petit, Alain Fleury and Claude Quancard), came to the conclusion that the bassin d’Arcachon was potentially a very attractive environment for birds, but could not fulfil its potential because of the absence of protected habitat along its shoreline. They contacted the Mairie du Teich and put forward the idea of creating a bird reserve along the lines of that which had already been established at Zwin in Belgium.

It was in 1989 that the orientation towards ecotourism is taken by the new municipality in partnership with the Regional Natural Park with the establishment of the house of the nature of the Bassin d’Arcachon. The town of Teich still owns the reserve, which it runs in tandem with the Parc Naturel Régional des Landes Gascogne according to a bipartite agreement.

The land on which the reserve stands was reclaimed from the sea from the first half of the 18th century onwards. Clay dykes were gradually constructed on the salt meadows, both to protect the village from the winter floods and above all to allow for the establishment of a kind of non-intensive form of fish-farming: ‘fish reservoirs’.

The water that flows into the reservoirs as a result brings with it a multitude of fry (juvenile fish) born in the Arcachon basin or the open ocean. Prevented from escaping by an ingenious system of nets, they will grow rapidly inside the dyked area, thanks to the highly-productive ecosystem here, due to the relatively high temperature of the water, the absence of any currents or tides and the proliferation of plankton, algae and vegetation.

This type of fish-farming, together with agriculture (tobacco, potatoes, rye) and stock-raising (sheep), continued until the middle of the 20th century before entering a slow decline due to the cost of dyke and reservoir upkeep and high employment costs. In the 1960s, the largest source of income derived from these dyked areas came from the sale of hunting licences. Local authorities started buying up land in the 1970s (within Le Teich’s municipal boundaries) and then in other parts of the Arcachon Basin by the 1980s. These acquisitions were designed to provide lasting protection for these dyked areas, which are an integral part of the region’s heritage.