A Brief History of Forestry.

There was lively opposition to the enforcement of these prescriptions, especially where they interfered with property rights, nevertheless they persisted until the changes brought about by the revolution of 1789.

Certain prescriptions, as for instance the exclusion of sheepherding were never enforced, and this practice continues even to-day in certain sections.

As a result of the reform, however, the revenues from the royal forests trebled in 20 years.

During the 18th century, several famines occurred and led to the encouragement of extending farm operations at the expense of the forest, notably in the sixties, when among other similar efforts some 200 families returning from Canada after the English conquest were colonized in the forests of Poitou. At that time, also the “declaration” of 1766 exempted those who cleared land for farm purposes for 15 years from all taxes. As a result of this invitation some 750,000 acres were cleared, and the practice of clearing for farm use continued until the middle of the 19th century. In this way, by inconsiderately exposing soil which would not everywhere be found adapted to farm use, wastes naturally existing were greatly increased.

The revolution brought with it sudden and disastrous changes. The law of 1791 abolished not only the jurisdiction of the maîtrises, but removed all restraint, and thereby inaugurated widespread destruction and devastation of forest property against which legislative attempts of the republican government were entirely powerless. Not only did the peasants take advantage of the disorder, and the municipalities cut their reserves without hindrance but extraordinary fellings in the state forests were necessitated by the needs of the navy and the exchequer. In 1801, after various previous attempts at organization, Napoleon reorganized the service, with five administrators, 30 conservators, 200 inspectors and 8,600 inferior officers. At that time, it appears that the revenue from the public forest domain amounted to $6,000,000, a sum justifying such elaborate organization. But otherwise the methods of Colbert’s ordinance were revived. Devastation, however, continued.

Incompetence in the service, was again introduced when in 1811 half the number of officials was recruited from superannuated army officers. In 1817, the whole forest service was abolished, and the properties placed in the hands of the fiscal agents of the government without any technical knowledge. The old order of things was, however, re-established in 1820, and soon after the final organization which has lasted to date was effected.

3. Development of Modern Forest Policy

In 1822, a commission composed of foresters was instituted to revise the ordinance of 1669, which, here and there modified, had continued to be valid, except during the revolutionary period. The result of the work of this commission was the Code Forestier (1829) which is the law of the present day. In it, principles are laid down under which the state, communal and other public forests are to be managed.

All forests submitted to the régime forestier, namely, the state and communal forests and those belonging to public institutions, are entirely managed by the state forest administration, the communities or other public forest owners paying for the service not to exceed 9 cents per acre, or 5 per cent. of the revenue. All jurisdiction and execution of forestry laws is in the hands of the officials of the Forest Administration. The foresters of the state have the exclusive responsibility of making and executing working plans, without interference by the municipalities after the plans have once been submitted and approved by them. The corporations have not even the right to appoint their own guards, all such being appointed by the prefects of the departments upon recommendation by the forest department.

The fellings, usually performed by the purchaser, (the wood being sold on the stump), are supervised most rigorously, making even the smallest deviations from the conditions of the contract sale, which otherwise would only entail the payment of damage, punishable by fine; and the responsibility for any trespass which may occur on the land reaches 250 yards beyond the limits of the purchaser’s territory, unless he gives proper warning and tries to find out the perpetrators of the same. Legal proceedings are brought before the courts of correction, and are greatly simplified, as is customary in Germany.

The public forests may not be sold, mortgaged or divided, and the product can be sold only through state foresters. As in the olden times, one-quarter of the stands in the timber forests, and one-fourth of the felling budget in the coppice is placed in reserve for urgent or unforeseen needs.

In addition to these and other restrictions which refer to the public forests, there are prescriptions which apply to all woods in general. All foresters employed, even on private properties, have sheriff’s power. Walking in the woods with axe, saw and wagon outside of the public roads which pass through them, is forbidden; the making of fires is forbidden; the making of fire lines, 20 yards wide, between private forests can be enforced by either owner, and railroads, along their rights of way, are required to make such. By special law of 1893, the setting of fires even within 200 yards of a wood is forbidden in certain regions, and the punishment of infractions of these laws is very severe.

The rights of user are gauged by the administration according to the possible yield, even in private forests, and are surrounded by many other restrictions; the wood falling under such rights of user is cut and delivered by the forest agents, and the rights can be forcibly extinguished by exchange of territory.

The supervision of the communal forests which had, indeed, existed since the 16th century was by no means an easy task. The opposition to it which had always existed and was, in earlier times, justified by the incompetence and graft of the officials, continued even after this justification of it had ceased. Thanks to the tact and efficiency of the officials of the modern period, the opposition has been largely overcome, and, thanks to the progress made in enforcing these rigorous laws, their necessity has almost vanished, and, at present, relatively few infractions need to be investigated and punished. Moreover, the rigor of the original law was somewhat abated by the law of 1859.

There are, however, voices which proclaim that the supervision by the government is not as thorough as it should be, and that the conditions of the communal property have deteriorated.

While the supervision of the management of communal property is mainly based on fiscal considerations, the Code forestier also authorizes the administration to interfere in the management of forests whose influence on the public welfare can be demonstrated.

In order to assure the possibility of such interference, every private owner who desires to clear land is required to advise the government of his purpose, when the administration can prevent such clearing, if deemed necessary to prevent landslides, erosion and torrential action, to protect watersources, sand dunes, for defensive purposes at the frontier (!), and for public health. Otherwise, the management of private forest is unhampered.

By special legislation, enacted in 1860 and 1882, however, the special cases of torrential action were taken care of in a special manner, which will be set forth in following pages. The reboisement law of 1882 authorizes the administration to acquire by expropriation mountain forests or mountain slopes needed for reforestation for the sake of safeguarding them and preventing torrential damage.

For Algiers, the same authorization to expropriate was extended by law of 1903 to include all such areas on which according to the Code forestier the administration might forbid clearing, and such extension is advocated for the mother country.

As a rule the administration has been able to avoid expropriation and secure the territories by voluntary sale at less than $10 per acre.

At present, the forest service is under the Minister of Agriculture as President of the Forestry Council, with a Director-General as Vice President and technical head, and three Administrateurs Vérificateurs généraux, chiefs of the three bureaux into which the administration is divided, each with two chiefs of sections, Inspectors, and the necessary office staff. For purposes of the local administration the forest area is divided into 32 conservations, each under charge of a Conservateur equivalent to the German Oberforstmeister. These are again subdivided into Chefferies or Inspections, two to twelve in each conservation, which are administrative units, under the supervision of Inspectors (200) and Assistant Inspectors (210). In addition, a special service for forest-organization and reboisement employs 14 inspectors and some 20 assistants. The forest districts or cantonments (ranges) finally are under the direct charge of Gardes généraux (162), with the assistance of Gardes généraux stagiaires (67) and underforesters or guards (Brigadiers) (3,650); altogether a personnel of over 4,400 officials. While this is a larger force per acreage, yet the expense for personnel per acre is less than one-half that of the Prussian forest administration, and one-quarter of that in several of the other German state administrations.

In 1909, a reorganization was effected improving to some extent the salaries.

The legislation of 1909 also further strengthens State influence by placing certain private properties under the control of the Administration, and allowing the latter to undertake the management of private properties at the request of owners for a consideration.

The budget for 1911 places the total expenditure for the Forest Administration at 3 million dollars (98 cents per acre), of which 950,000 for reboisement and other improvement work. The receipts for the last five years have averaged near 7 million dollars, so that a net result of $1.60 per acre seems attained, considering the expense of reboisement as new investment.

4. Work of Reforestation

The most noted work of the forest administration, and one for which it deserves high credit, has been that of the reclamation of waste lands, of which, in 1879, it was estimated there were still 20,000,000 acres in extent. Especially the “reboisement” work in the Alpine districts, as a result of the law of 1882, has become celebrated.

The movement for recovery of waste lands dates from the beginning of the 19th century, and to-day reforestation by state, communal and private effort encouraged by legislative acts during the last sixty years, has restored well-nigh more than 3,000,000 acres of ground which had been lost to forest production.

There are four definite regions of large extent in which systematic effort in this direction has been made, namely, the sand dunes of Gascony and the Landes of Southwestern France; the sandy plains of La Sologne; the limestone wastes of Champagne; and the mountain slopes in the Vosges and Jura-Alps.

The sand dunes on the coast of France comprise around 350,000 acres; those on the coast of Gascony in Southwest France alone have an extent of nearly 250,000 acres, these being the most important and having for a long time endangered the adjoining pastures and fields. It seems that the land occupied by dunes was originally forested, and that these were created by deforestation.

As early as 1717, successful attempts at reforestation were made by the inhabitants of La Teste, and from that time on sporadically small plantings came into existence. But the inauguration of systematic reforestation was begun only after a notable report by Brémontier, who, in 1786, secured, as chief engineer of the department of Bordeaux, a sum of $10,000 to be employed in ascertaining the possibilities of draining the Landes by means of a canal, and of fixing the dunes. As a result of this beginning, the method for their recovery having been, by 1793, experimentally determined by Brémontier, 275,000 acres of moving sand have been fixed during the last century. The revolutionary government, in 1799, created a Commission of Dunes, of which Brémontier was made president, and annual appropriation of $10,000 was made, later (in 1808) increased to $15,000. In 1817, the work was transferred to the Administration des Ponts et Chaussées. The appropriations were increased until, in 1854, they reached $100,000 a year, and in 1865, the work being nearly finished, the dunes were handed over to the forest administration. There being still about 20,000 acres to be recovered, this was achieved in 1865, when 200,000 acres had been reforested at an expense of about $2,000,000, and an additional expense of $700,000 to organize the newly formed pine forests —Pinus maritima was entirely used. These, at present, with their resinous products and wood are furnishing valuable material. An unfortunate policy of ceding some of these forest areas to private and communal owners, who claimed them as of ancient right, and also of sales was inaugurated just as the planting was finished, so that at present only 125,000 acres remain in the hands of the state. The returns from the sales, however, reimbursed the cost of the reboisement in excess by $140,000, so that the state really acquired for nothing, a property, now estimated to be worth $10,000,000.

A similar plantation on moving sands, of 35,000 acres, is found north of this tract.

To the eastward of this region of dunes stretch the so-called Landes, a territory triangular in shape, containing 2,000,000 acres of shifting sands and marshes, on which a poor population of shepherds (on stilts) used to eke out a living. In 1873, Chambrelent, an engineer of the administration of bridges and roads (administration des ponts et chaussées), conceived the idea of improving this section by reforestation, and at his own expense recovered some 1,200 acres in the worst marsh by ditching and planting. The success of this plantation invited imitators, and, by 1855, the reforested area had grown to 50,000 acres. This led, in 1857, to the passage of a law ordering forestation of the parts of the land owned by the state as well as by the communities, the state at the same time undertaking the expense of building a system of roads and making the plans for forestation free of charge. The communities were allowed to sell a part of the reclaimed land in order to recover the expense, and sold some 470,000 acres for 2.7 million dollars, of which less than $300,000 were used to forest the 250,000 acres belonging to them. From 1850 to 1892, private owners imitating the government and communal work, altogether nearly 1,750,000 acres were covered with pine forest at a cost of $4.00 to $5.00 per acre, or, including the building of roads, for a total expenditure of around $10,000,000. In 1877, the value of the then recovered area was estimated at over $40,000,000, this figure being arrived at by calculating the possible net revenues of a pinery under a 75 years rotation, which was figured at $2.50 per acre, with a production of 51 cubic feet per acre and 200 quarts of resin (at $3). An estimate of recent date places the value of the recovered area at $100,000,000.

Centrally located between the valleys of the Loire and the Cher, near Orleans, lies the region of La Sologne, a sandy, poorly drained plain upon an impenetrable calcareous sub-soil giving rise to stagnant waters; this region too had been originally densely wooded, and was described as a paradise in early times; but from the beginning of the 17th century to the end of the 18th it was deforested, making it an unhealthy, useless waste. By 1787, 1,250,000 acres of this territory had become absolutely abandoned.

About the middle of the 19th century, a number of influential citizens constituted themselves a committee to begin its work of recovery, the Director General of Forests being authorized to assume the presidency of that committee. As a result, a canal 25 miles in length and 350 miles of road were built, and some 200,000 acres, all non-agricultural lands, were sowed and planted with Maritime and Scotch Pine, the state furnishing assistance through the forest service and otherwise. A set-back occurred during the severe winter of 1879, frost killing many of the younger plantations, which led to the substitution of the hardier Scotch Pine for the Maritime Pine in the plantings. The cost per acre set out with about 3,500 two-year old seedlings amounted to $5.00. An estimate of the value of these plantations places it at, not less than $18,000,000, so that lands which 50 years ago, could hardly be sold for $4.00 per acre, now bring over $3.00 as an annual revenue.

In the province of Champagne, South of Rheims, a plain of arid lime-stone wastes of an extent which in the 18th century had reached 1,750,000 acres is found. About 1807, the movement for the recovery of these wastes began; first in a small way, gaining strength by 1830 after some sporadic experiments had shown the possibility of reforestation, and to-day over 200,000 acres of coniferous forest (mainly Austrian and Scotch Pine), largely planted by private incentive, are in existence, the better acres being farmed. It is interesting to note that land which 50 years ago was often sold without measurement by distance, “as far as the cry would carry,” and rarely for more than $4.00 per acre, is to-day worth over $40.00 at a cost for planting of less than $25.00. The stumpage value of a thirty years’ growth is figured at from $50 to $100, the total forest area is valued at $10,000,000, with net revenue from the 200,000 acres at $2.00 per acre.

France is unfortunate in having within her territory, although so little mountainous, the largest proportion of the area in Europe liable to torrential action. Not less than 1,462 brooks and mountain streams have been counted as dangerous waters in the Alps, the Cevennes, and the Pyrenees mountains; or two-thirds of the torrents of Europe. An area nearly 1,000,000 acres in extent, of mountain slopes, is exposed to the ravages of these waters by erosion.

Here the most forcible demonstration of the value of a forest cover in protecting watersheds was furnished by the results of the extensive forest destruction and devastation which took place especially during and following the years of the Revolution.

Long ago, in the 16th century, the local parliaments had enacted decrees against clearing in the mountains, with severe fines, confiscation and even corporal punishment, and these restrictions had been generally effective; but during the Revolutionary period all these wholesome restrictions vanished; inconsiderate exploitation by the farmers began, and the damage came so rapidly that in less than ten years after the beginning of freedom, the effect was felt. Within three years (1792), the first complaints of the result of unrestricted cutting were heard, and, by 1803, they were quite general. The brooks had changed to torrents, inundating the plains, tearing away fertile lands or silting them over with the debris carried down from the mountains. Yet in spite of these early warnings and the theoretical discussions by such men as Boussingault, Becquerel and others, the destructive work by axe, fire and over-pasturing progressed until about 8,000,000 acres of tillable land had been rendered more or less useless, and the population of 18 departments had been impoverished or reduced in number by emigration.

A young engineer, Surell, was the first to study the possibility of coping with the evil and proved in his Etude sur les torrents, in 1841, its relation to forest cover, and the need of attacking it at the sources. The first work of recovery was tentatively begun in 1843, but the political events following did not promote its extension, until, in 1860, a special law charged the Forest Department with the mission of extinguishing the torrents. There were recognized two categories of work, the one, considered of general public interest being designated as obligatory, the other with less immediate need being facultative; the territories devastated by each river and its affluents on which the work of recovery was to be executed were known as perimeters. In the obligatory perimeters, private lands were to be acquired by the state by process of expropriation, the communal properties were to be only for a time occupied by the state and after the achievement of the recovery were to be restituted on payment of the expense of the work; or else the corporation could get rid of the debt by ceding one-half of its property to the state.

In the facultative perimeters, the state was simply to assist in the work of recovery by gratuitous distribution of seeds and plants, or even by money subventions in some cases. It appeared hard that the poor mountaineers should have to bear all the expense of the extinction of the torrents, and much complaint was heard. In response to these complaints, in 1864, a law was passed allowing the substitution of sodding instead of forest planting for at least part of the perimeters, with a view of securing pastures; but this method seems not to have been successful and was mostly not employed.

Finally, by the reboisement law of 1882, the complaints of the mountaineers were properly taken care of by placing the entire expense of the reboisement work on the state. The attitude of the mountaineers, which was at first hostile, due to the restriction of the pasture, has been overcome by the beneficial results of the work, and now the most hostile are ready to offer gratuitously their territory to the Forest Department. Wherever necessary the state has bought territory, and from year to year has increased its holdings, and continues to acquire land at the rate of 25,000 to 30,000 acres per year, the budget of 1902, for instance, containing $1,000,000 for this purpose; that of 1911, only $40,000.

Altogether the state had, up to 1900, acquired 400,000 acres, of which 218,000 have been planted, and it is estimated that about 430,000 acres more will have to be acquired. The total expense, outside of subventions to communities and private owners, up to 1900 has been over $13,000,000, of which somewhat over $5,000,000 was expended for purchases, it is estimated that round $25 to $30 million more will be needed to complete the work. Of the 1,462 torrents there were in 1893, 163 entirely controlled, and 654 begun to be “cured.” Among the former, there were 31 which 50 years ago were considered by engineers incurable. It is estimated that, with the expenditure of $600,000 per annum, the work may be finished by 1945. The names of Matthieu and Demontzey, especially the latter, are indelibly connected with this great work.

Lately, however, Briot in his classical work Les Alpes françaises criticizes severely as improperly extravagant the large expenditures in places where the result does not warrant them, and proclaims as illusory some of the methods adopted.

5. Forestry Science and Practice

Until the 16th century, whatever regulations had been issued regarding forest use were merely of administrative or police character and had nothing to do with management or silviculture, except perhaps so far as the number of baliveaux, reserved trees to be left, might be considered as bearing upon the subject. The réformateurs who were from time to time appointed had to deal only with judicial questions and abuses; and usually the ordinances referred only to special forests, but in 1563, the Table de marbre of Paris issued instructions which were to serve in all forests.

A futile attempt to secure statistical knowledge of the forest domain was made, apparently with a view to regulation of the cut, by de Fleury, the chief of the forest service in 1561. In default of data from many of the maîtrises, a provisional partial order to regulate the cut was issued in 1573, which remained in force for a hundred years, and was regularly disregarded, extraordinary cuts being made without authority and with the connivance of the officers.

An ordinance of 1579 describes the deplorable condition of the forests at length, and calls for statistical data, but again without result. A number of further ordinances also made no impression upon the callous and corrupt officials of the forest service.