A Brief History of Forestry. / In Europe, the United States and Other Countries

by B. E. Fernow

Not until Colbert’s vigorous reform in 1669 came a change in conditions.

Meanwhile, some forestry notions had been developed: a sequence of felling areas in the coppice, and hence an area division, an idea of rotation and of the exploitable age (10 to 20 years, although sometimes down to 3 and 4 years), the leaving of overwood, which became obligatory in the royal domain, and a kind of regulation of its age (40 years—too short according to one writer of the time to furnish valuable trees), and some proper considerations of its selection.

In the timber forest, the fellings proceeded by area in regular order from year to year, leaving a prescribed number of marked seed trees, at least 6 to 8 per acre, on such areas as were outside the rights of user and removed from the likelihood of depredations; the felling age being at least 100 years, under the notion that the oak, the most favored species, “grows for one hundred years, keeps vigorous but stands still for another hundred, and declines in a third hundred.” Sowing of acorns on prepared ground was also ordered in the 16th century, and perhaps occasionally done. Young growths were sometimes protected by ditches or fences against cattle, although objections were raised against the former as impeding the chase. A diameter limit sometimes reserved all oak and beech two feet in circumference at six inches from the ground, the height of the stump. Even improvement cuttings (called recépages) are on record in Normandie, mainly for the purpose of cutting out softwoods and freeing the young valuable reproduction, repeated in decennial returns. Later, thinnings assumed the character of selection fellings and, indeed, received the name of jardinage. They were continued until the time for final cut and regeneration had arrived. In the coniferous mountain forests, selection cutting, pure and simple, was the rule.

It appears, then, that quite sane notions of silviculture existed, albeit they may not have been very generally and very strictly carried out. Especially during the 16th century, the maladministration of the royal domain brought with it a decadence of the practice in the woods; the area of the coppice increased by clear cutting at the expense of the timber forest, and, by Colbert’s time, all forestry knowledge had wellnigh become forgotten.

The forest ordinance of 1669 attempted to reform not only the administrative abuses but to improve the method of exploitation hitherto practised; at least it put in writing, codified as it were, the best usage of the time. A commission of 21 was instituted to make working plans and prescribe the practice.

The prescriptions had reference both to management and silvicultural practice. A felling budget (état d’assiette) was prescribed annually by the grand maître for each garderie (district), and felling areas were also, sometimes, but not always, definitely located. Besides, extraordinary fellings might be ordered.

The garderies were divided into triages (now called cantons), management classes or site classes under different rotations, and the fellings proceeded in each triage in sequence.

In each felling area, as had supposedly been the practice, at least 8 seed trees per acre, and generally 16, besides those under the diameter limit, were to be left—the method à tire et aire.

Intermediary fellings—thinnings—were avoided and frowned down upon, probably because of the abuses to which they had given rise. Meanwhile their need grew more and more, especially in those places where the felling method did not produce satisfactory regeneration, and softwoods impeded the development of the better kinds. To improve the chances for valuable regeneration and to keep the softwoods down, the foresters proposed the reduction of rotations from 100 to 50 and even 40 years, and, as with each felling the number of reserve trees had to be left, the forest assumed a form resembling the coppice under standards.

In the coniferous woods of the mountains (fir), which in Colbert’s time appear almost like a new discovery to his reformers, the selection forest with a diameter limit (e.g., 6 inch at the small end of the 21-foot log) was the method most generally in vogue, and is still to a large extent the method in use, but somewhat better regulated and modified, sometimes with improvement fellings added. In some parts, especially in Lorraine, for a time, artificial regeneration and a strip system were tried, and even a group selection with a regeneration period of probably 25 to 30 years and an exploitable age of 100 years, was practised in the 18th century.