Seven hundred metres of concrete, a few roundabouts and foundations swallowed by ferns: that is what the Chambaran forest, in the commune of Roybon in Isère, still bears in its very flesh today. In the Chambaran forest, Roybon, Isère, 700 metres of concrete lead nowhere, with circulation tracks, roundabouts and foundations forming the frozen backdrop of a site left at the drafting stage. The clearing opened to welcome a giant vacation village never actually welcomed a visitor. No cottages were ever built on this site, no holidaymaker ever set down their suitcase here, despite millions of euros of public money committed.
To note
- Why do 90 hectares of forest remain cleared six years after the project was abandoned?
- How did a zone to defend and administrative justice block a giant investment for thirteen years?
- Who bears responsibility for closing this wound in the forest massif?
A Holiday Village Promised to Save Roybon
Everything begins in 2007. The Pierre et Vacances group approached the commune of Roybon, a little over 1,000 inhabitants, on the edge of the Drôme. The ambition was outsized for a rural village: to build a vacation village of 990 cottages and a water- and leisure-space heated to 29 °C year-round with tropical plants, on a 203-hectare area, with more than thirty sports and leisure activities, for a housing capacity of around 5,500 beds. The project was also to include 2,088 parking spaces and to welcome 380,000 visitors per year.
For a commune that had been losing residents for years, the economic argument hit home. The future complex was pitched as a booster for the entire territory, with a promise to create 468 “full-time equivalent” jobs, i.e., nearly 700 contracts in total. The initial authorizations followed quickly: a simplified revision of the local urban plan was approved on May 3, 2010 by the municipal council, and a deforestation authorization under the forestry code was issued by the Isère prefect on July 12, 2010, then again in April 2013. The first earthworks could begin.
Wetlands, appeals and the zone to defend: the triple lock
The chosen site is not neutral. The project sits at the headwaters of two rivers, in the heart of the Chambaran forest, a sector often described by opponents as a “water castle.” It is precisely this hydrological wealth that would become the spine of the conflict. An authorization to destroy wetlands was granted on October 3, 2014 to the project holder, SNC Roybon Cottages, under the Water Act. But the association For the Chambaran without Center Parcs, fishing federations and several environmental groups filed multiple appeals before the administrative court.
The Grenoble Administrative Court canceled this order in July 2015. The Lyon Court of Appeal upheld the sanction in December 2016, ruling that the sites chosen to compensate for the destroyed wetlands were too dispersed, the court noting their “fragmentation” and their “distance,” located across five departments, from Ardèche to Ain and north of Haute-Savoie.
On the ground, another battle was unfolding in parallel. A zone to defend was established in 2014, physically blocking access to the construction site. The Pierre et Vacances group held out for ten years, through appeals and petitions to the Council of State, before giving up. The abandonment communiqué, published in July 2020, summed up the impasse: “We were in a stalemate, it had become inextricable between the occupation of the site, changes in regulations, the authorizations for building permits, for deforestation, the Water Act, species preservation, and the delays of justice at the different stages—the Court of Appeal, the Administrative Court, the Council of State. All of that piled up, it was endless.” The legal rationale at the end boiled down to a single sentence: the deforestation authorization, essential for the project’s realization, had become void, and access to the site remained blocked by activists illegally occupying the land since 2014. Gérard Brémond, head of the group, then admitted that “it wasn’t with joy” that he made this decision. A few weeks later, 200 gendarmes and construction machinery dismantled the Roybon ZAD, ending thirteen years of militant occupation.
What the Deforestation Left on the Ground
The physical balance sheet of the halted site remained frozen in the landscape. According to figures reported by several associations, 90 hectares had been cleared, 31 hectares covered in concrete, and between 110 and 120 hectares of wetlands had been degraded, an impact that drew negative assessments from the National Office for Water and Aquatic Environments (ONEMA), the Regional Environmental Directorate, and the National Council for Nature Protection. Six years after the official abandonment, the situation hardly changed. In 2026, those concrete tracks are still there, overtaken by vegetation. The forest is gradually reclaiming space in places, without erasing the traces of the construction site, nor signs of any utility.
Who Should Reforest a Clearing Without a Project?
The question of restoration runs into persistent ambiguity. Property remains largely in the hands of the Pierre et Vacances group, which gave no precise indication about the future of these hectares at the moment of the project’s abandonment. Some of the land has indeed changed hands: according to local information, the Bièvre Isère intermunicipal authority and the town of Roybon bought a portion of the forest with support from the department and the region, aiming to develop a new tourist project after the Center Parcs project was abandoned and the ZAD evacuated. But this takeover does not cover the entire cleared area, and there is no indication to date that a reforestation or wetland renaturation program has been started on the parts still privately held.
On the ground, local actors are trying to move forward nonetheless. A local consultation was launched to try to give meaning back to this scarred clearing, bringing together farmers, foresters, hunters and environmental associations. But no firm timetable has been announced. A forest that is cleared for a project that never comes to be does not become forest again simply with the passage of time: without voluntary reforestation, Roybon’s clearing will remain for a long time a gap in the massif, caught between two uses, between two owners, and with no one to sign the deed of its restoration.
Sources: lyon.cour-administrative-appel.fr | europe1.fr | grenoble.tribunal-administratif.fr
