Les Salins-d'Hyères, Nature reserve and wetland in La Londe-les-Maures, France.

Les Salins-d'Hyères comprises two separate salt-marsh units on the Hyères coast: the Vieux Salins, 350 hectares east of town toward La Londe-les-Maures, and the Salin des Pesquiers, 550 hectares within the double tombolo of the Giens peninsula. The photograph shows low earthen mounds and banks of pale tan and grey dry soil, patches of green grass and clumps of brownish-green scrub, with water at their edges and a thin line of low land and small structures on the horizon.

Salt harvesting began here during Roman times and continued for centuries as an important local industry. Operations stopped in the late 1900s, after which the site gradually transformed into a nature reserve protecting the area's ecological value.

The name Hyères comes from the salt pans: a 963 charter of Emperor Conrad is the first written mention of the salins. From 1229 Genoa held a near-monopoly on Hyérois salt, and seasonal workers from northern Italy came each late summer to harvest it. The railway station Les Salins-d'Hyères opened in 1876 and closed to freight in 1987.

The two units are separate: the Vieux Salins lie east of Hyères towards La Londe-les-Maures, the Salin des Pesquiers south of town inside the double tombolo of the Giens peninsula. The Pesquiers has a deep-water reservoir, salt pans, freshwater marshes, coastal pine woods and dunes, so bring footwear for wet, muddy edges. The railway halt Les Salins-d'Hyères, opened in 1876, closed to freight in 1987.

The Salin des Pesquiers hosts the only French colony of the slender-billed gull in 2013, after breeding failed in the Bouches-du-Rhône, Gard and Hérault. The colony settled there in 2009 and is one of only two in the region, alongside Camargue. The site is the sole breeding ground in Var for avocets, black-winged stilts and little terns.