THE FOREST CODE AND THE REGIME FORESTIER 



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entailed rights in the royal and seigneurial forests 

 developed largely from the sheer necessity of meeting the 

 needs of the local agricultural population for wood — for 

 fuel, farm buildings, and implements. Entailed rights 

 were usually held and exercised by the villages of serfs 

 or tenants in common. They became community rights, 



ROAD THROUGH A FRENCH STATE FOREST 



A great deal of care and attention is given in France to the building and maintenance of 

 roads, one of the features of France with which the American visitor is impressed. 



so firmly established as to be a fixed and accepted factor 

 in the forest legislation of France from its earliest 

 development. 



In the breaking-up of the feudal system and the over- 

 turning of the old order under the Revolution, these 

 little communities asserted their old 

 rights and claims so vigorously as to 

 acquire many small tracts of forest and 

 pasture land in fee simple. The history 

 of the communal forests is a complicated 

 one. Their acreage has been swelled 

 from various sources, including com- 

 munity purchases in some instances. 

 Following the Revolution, the acquisition 

 of forests by the communes was largely 

 antagonistic to the slowly developing 

 policy of national conservation. But 

 during the past half century, French 

 policy has aimed steadily to harmonize 

 and correlate the two forms of public 

 ownership. Following the success in con- 

 trolling sand dunes on the southwestern 

 coast, the planting of many communal 

 holdings in the sand plains of the Landes 

 was required by special legislation, with 

 state supervision and aid. 185,000 acres 

 of communal forests were created out- 

 right by this co-operative enterprise. A somewhat simi- 

 lar policy has been followed in the French Alps as part 



of the effort to protect mountain slopes from erosion. 



■— 



•There are practically no forests in France owned by the Departments, 

 the political divisions corresponding to states in America. 



The communal forests in France today aggregate more 

 than the holdings of the state itself. And under the 

 terms of the forest code, the great bulk of them are 

 administered by the national service in accordance with 

 the requirements of the "regime forestier." In other 

 words, they form part and parcel of the public forests 

 and meet the same needs in national 

 economy as the timberlands owned by 

 the central government.* The com- 

 munal forests still serve their original 

 purpose of furnishing supplies of wood 

 for local use, particularly fuel. But 

 under the careful supervision of the 

 national forest service, they also produce 

 quantities of large timber which are 

 utilized for the general requirements of 

 France. They furnished a fifth of the 

 timber cut by the American Army. Some 

 communes own and operate their own 

 small sawmills. These forests are an 

 important source of revenue for hun- 

 dreds of French villages, reducing taxes 

 and affording the means for construct- 

 ing town halls, roads, and other local 

 improvements. The situation in France 

 would be paralleled if every village in 

 New England or the Lake States owned 

 500 or 1,000 acres of forest, kept con- 

 tinuously in the best state of production, furnishing the 

 timber locally needed, affording a substantial revenue for 

 community purposes, and providing means for the steady 

 employment of a number of its workers. 



The forest code establishes the principle that all public 



A CAMOUFLAGED ROAD 



The French were particularly skillful in hiding their roads from the enemy flyers so that 

 their transports to the front could continue without attention from the enemy artillery. 



forests must be placed under a definite scheme of manage- 

 ment, the main point of which is to fix the amount of 

 wood which may be cut yearly without reducing the 

 growing stock, or capital, and to prescribe the method of 

 cutting so as to maintain the productivity of the prop- 



