Forty Years Of French Sustainability

Forty years of French sustainability
Source: Forestry & British Timber. (June 3, 2005): p14. From General OneFile.
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Next year marks the 40th anniversary of theFrench national forest- management service ONF set up as part of the Ministry of Agriculture, Food, Fisheries and Rural Affairs. However - as Hilary Burke reports - state involvement in this sphere onthe other side of the Channel goes back around 800 years.
The national management of French forests was introduced by the monarch Philip the Fair. In 1291 he appointed the Administration of Water andForests which was still operating until the 1966 changes.
It was to oversee the establishment of the country's royal hunting forests, the publication of the forest laws of 1827 and the greatreplanting schemes of the latter half of the 19th century. Now covering 13.3 million hectares of the French mainland, the nation's woodlands had been reduced to 9m ha in 1800.
In the 19th century,governments across Europe were to discover the pot of gold that was locked up in what economists of the time saw as the under-productive common grazing lands. Selling to the highest bidders - the wealthy fewwho could afford to buy the large areas involved, even at the knock-down prices demanded - was not the politically correct option for the French.
It may have worked in Britain and Spain but maybe theauthorities in Paris knew that such action would lead to another revolution! Long-term investment was the path taken and, in most cases, it was decided that plantations of suitable tree species wouldeventually yield the best profit.
Today, some of the most impressive stands of French timber are to be found on the former common land of market towns and villages across the length and breadth ofFrance.
Decrees from the capital even led to the afforestation of the extensive marshlands of Les Landes in the Atlantic South-West although, in this case, the huge areas of Maritime pines planted...