Landes (French pronunciation: [lɑ̃d] ⓘ; Gascon and Occitan: Lanas [ˈlanəs]; Basque: Landak) is a department in the Nouvelle-Aquitaine region, Southwestern France, with a long coastline on the Atlantic Ocean to the west.

The vegetation covered rich soil and was periodically burned off, leaving excellent pasturage for sheep, which around 1850 are thought to have numbered between 900,000 and 1,000,000 in this area.

The sheep were managed by shepherds who moved around on stilts and became proficient at covering long distances thus supported.

Most of the sheep departed during the second half of the nineteenth century when systematic development of large pine plantations transformed the landscape and the local economy.

The forest was planted in the early nineteenth century to prevent erosion of the region's sandy soil by the sea.