Stand up for historic forests or face wasteland
Forestry workers have taken to the streets to raise awareness of the “dangerous industrialisation” of woodland.
France has 169,000km2 of forest – the fourth largest area in Europe – but workers from the Office National des Fôrets are concerned about ecological damage caused by exploitation.
One march organiser, Philippe Berger, said: “What we are seeing with the forests now is similar to what happened with agriculture in the 1980s.
“There is increasing industrialisation, with larger and more powerful machines, the buying- out of small forests by large groups, and a lack of concern about the ecological effects of exploitation.”
Mr Berger and other workers organised marches to call for laws to simplify and limit forest exploitation and for more state officials to control them.
Numbers of ONF agents have fallen from 14,000 in the 1980s to around 8,500 today, when the forestry resource is at its largest.
The marches from the south and east, home to the biggest state forests, met in the centre of France at St Bonnet Tronçais, Allier, to plan a manifesto to call for elected officials to act to save the forests and limit the actions of private companies. Until the last couple of years the amount of land classed as forest had been rising steadily, but Mr Berger said that has changed.
“The increase was mainly due to farmers abandoning land where they could not use machines. Now they have used most of the flat land and are starting to look to expand into forested areas.
“If France is to have forests with management close to the ground, the state has to put more resources into our work.”
He said it was like Quebec, where control of forests was taken out of state hands and given to private companies: “There are whole swathes of what used to be well-managed forest which are now wastelands with very degraded soil.
“We absolutely do not want a similar situation in France.”
Concerns have also been raised about changes in the Landes forest, the largest continuous forest in Europe, which was created in the 19th century.
“There used to be an 80 to 90-year cycle to grow maritime pines, which has now been reduced to 35 years by clear stripping whole areas, replanting quickly and using very large amounts of fertiliser,” he said.
“This is obviously changing the soil and alarming scientists.”
