One bi-weekly magazine, Revue des Eaux et Forêts, in existence for 50 years, the successor to the Annales forestières, begun in 1808, satisfies the needs of current literature, besides the journals of various forestry associations, among which the Bulletin de la Société de Franche Comté et Belfort has for a long time taken a prominent rank.
A very active propagandist literary and association work has within the last decades been inaugurated, and forestry associations of local character abound. Among these the “Touring Club,” a sporting association with some 16,000 members in 364 branches is active by writing out prizes and promoting waste land planting. Through its agency some 4000 acres had been planted by 1910, some 900 nurseries furnishing plant material.
An active Section of Silviculture in the Société des Agriculteurs some time ago absorbed the forestry association and is also doing practical work in the direction most needed, improvement of forestry practice among private woodland owners.
7. Colonial Policies.
The French possess extensive colonies in Africa, Asia, America and Oceania, covering not less than four million square miles with over 90 million people, to some of which at least they have extended some features of their forest policy, notably in Algeria, Tunis, Indo-China and Madagascar.
Algeria, which was conquered in 1828, is about four-fifths of the size of France, but only 5.5 per cent. is forested. Besides the desert, there are two forest regions, the northern slope, the so-called Tell, abutting on the Mediterranean, which, with 20 per cent. forested, contains the most valuable forests of Cork Oak, various other oaks, and Aleppo Pine; and the high plateau to the south, a region of steppes with about 6% forested, mostly with brushwood. The adjoining Tunis also contains some 2 million acres of forest, a part of which clothed with the valuable Cork Oak.
Although the population does not exceed 5 million, import of wood from Sweden and elsewhere to nearly one million dollars in amount is necessary. The first advance of civilization led to wide-spread destruction of the originally larger forest area; fire and pasture being specially destructive.
Before the French occupation, the 8 million acres of forest were all, as usual in the mussulman’s empires, the property of the sultan, but were used like communal property by the people. By 1871, the larger portion, some 6 million acres remained in possession of the state, much encumbered by rights of user.
At the same time, considerable areas (some 700,000 acres) had been ceded to communities outright, and others (1.25 million acres) had been sold to private parties. At first, these latter lands were let for exploitation of the cork oak on 40 year leases, later extended to 90 years with indemnities for damage by fire—an incentive to allow these to run, until in 1870, the fire damage having become onerous, all areas burned after 1863 were gratuitously ceded to the contractors, more than one-third the areas involved, and the other two-thirds were then sold at a ridiculously low price and under the easiest conditions of payment, in the same shameful manner in which the timberlands of the United States were given away.