I have been reading a lot for the last year about the French "forests" and ... I realized that the vocabulary used is quite far from its common sense.
It's a technical jargon, resulting in part of the super broad definition of a "forest" by the FAO. Savannas, jungles and tree plantations are all forests. Anything bigger than 5,000 square meters with some trees is a forest.
And the history of Europe is long. Deforestation became an issue for French kings as soon as the XIVth century. No forest is "natural" in the sense of untouched. So if a forest stayed untouched or hardly exploited for a "long" period, it's considered as "naturally growing". Which is sort of true in the context.
A "long" period is very contextual as well, from 30 to 300 years.
50% of French forests are plantations, with rows and columns. Most of what I would call a forest, with a good level of general biodiversity, results from the fragmentation of ownership: 75% of forests are private and owned by 3.5 million people. Very small plots of 2 to 3,000 square meters that have been mostly left alone since electricity and natural gas replaced fires of wood in modern houses.
There is no public forests in France: they are all privately owned by 11,000 towns (69% of the 25% of forests owned privately by a public actor). The rest is mainly owned by the French State, large forests inherited from the monarchy. Part of it is protected at very different degrees but 40% of the wood produced in France comes from those 25%, so it is quite exploited.
There is no "natural park" comparable to the US national parks. Because there are little towns and houses everywhere... and archeology shows it has been the case at least since the last 2,000 to 2,500 years. The deforestation had its peak in the XIIth century. The level of protection of the Nature varies a lot from park to park, to the point of being more marketing for tourism and/or political spin.
There is no wilderness in France. So the notion of Nature, hence what is natural and what is not is very contextual. The most naturally-growing parts results from the said fragmentation of ownership and disinterest by the owners. They are very often qualified as "abandoned". "Forests" are to French people what lawns are to the American Suburbia. Wild is not a positive notion ; the Nature is man-made. I think this is largely true in most part of Europe.
Btw, in Russia, only the part west of the Oural chain of mountains is considered as European. The rest is Asia. Definitions again.
It's very annoying to have to decipher all the time what a so-called forest really is on the ground. Now that ecology has become at last a political issue, these uncommon use of words is a very efficient tool to manipulate the opinion.
The truth is that the part of plantations is growing, eg agriculture of trees and not forests with their large biodiversity of plants.and animals of all sizes and a dense network of fungi.
31% of the French territory in Europe (the Guyane territory is part of the Amazon jungle) is qualified as forests and 50% of those are plantations. Still, wood and paper is the third commercial deficit of France. Hence the Macron policy very favorable to the wood industry and biodiversity is totally forgotten: planting trees is presented as the panacea against climate change.
We import manufactured wood from Germany and export logs to China who send back furniture. France has a wood industry problem. Biodiversity? What the heck, we are.capturing carbon and replacing concrete and steel by wood, stocking CO2 to fight climate change.
So we need to fight to protect true forests in France as much as for the Amazon forest in Brazil, where they are doing what we did from 3000 BC to 1850 AD, eg deforesting, even of replantations and some protection were introduced on the XIVth century (in order to... have trees for the French Navy against the English mainly and for royal hunting).
It's a technical jargon, resulting in part of the super broad definition of a "forest" by the FAO. Savannas, jungles and tree plantations are all forests. Anything bigger than 5,000 square meters with some trees is a forest.
And the history of Europe is long. Deforestation became an issue for French kings as soon as the XIVth century. No forest is "natural" in the sense of untouched. So if a forest stayed untouched or hardly exploited for a "long" period, it's considered as "naturally growing". Which is sort of true in the context.
A "long" period is very contextual as well, from 30 to 300 years.
50% of French forests are plantations, with rows and columns. Most of what I would call a forest, with a good level of general biodiversity, results from the fragmentation of ownership: 75% of forests are private and owned by 3.5 million people. Very small plots of 2 to 3,000 square meters that have been mostly left alone since electricity and natural gas replaced fires of wood in modern houses.
There is no public forests in France: they are all privately owned by 11,000 towns (69% of the 25% of forests owned privately by a public actor). The rest is mainly owned by the French State, large forests inherited from the monarchy. Part of it is protected at very different degrees but 40% of the wood produced in France comes from those 25%, so it is quite exploited.
There is no "natural park" comparable to the US national parks. Because there are little towns and houses everywhere... and archeology shows it has been the case at least since the last 2,000 to 2,500 years. The deforestation had its peak in the XIIth century. The level of protection of the Nature varies a lot from park to park, to the point of being more marketing for tourism and/or political spin.
There is no wilderness in France. So the notion of Nature, hence what is natural and what is not is very contextual. The most naturally-growing parts results from the said fragmentation of ownership and disinterest by the owners. They are very often qualified as "abandoned". "Forests" are to French people what lawns are to the American Suburbia. Wild is not a positive notion ; the Nature is man-made. I think this is largely true in most part of Europe.
Btw, in Russia, only the part west of the Oural chain of mountains is considered as European. The rest is Asia. Definitions again.
It's very annoying to have to decipher all the time what a so-called forest really is on the ground. Now that ecology has become at last a political issue, these uncommon use of words is a very efficient tool to manipulate the opinion.
The truth is that the part of plantations is growing, eg agriculture of trees and not forests with their large biodiversity of plants.and animals of all sizes and a dense network of fungi.
31% of the French territory in Europe (the Guyane territory is part of the Amazon jungle) is qualified as forests and 50% of those are plantations. Still, wood and paper is the third commercial deficit of France. Hence the Macron policy very favorable to the wood industry and biodiversity is totally forgotten: planting trees is presented as the panacea against climate change.
We import manufactured wood from Germany and export logs to China who send back furniture. France has a wood industry problem. Biodiversity? What the heck, we are.capturing carbon and replacing concrete and steel by wood, stocking CO2 to fight climate change.
So we need to fight to protect true forests in France as much as for the Amazon forest in Brazil, where they are doing what we did from 3000 BC to 1850 AD, eg deforesting, even of replantations and some protection were introduced on the XIVth century (in order to... have trees for the French Navy against the English mainly and for royal hunting).