Forest conservation in france
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The close of the second millennium has been paralleled by mounting awareness of the impact of human activities on the environment. This has thrown into question practices dating from the dawn of the industrial era, and brought the issue onto the agenda of a number of recent international meetings (....) The 1990 Strasbourg meeting, in particular, proclaimed that European nations signatory to the conference agreed to implement forest genetic resource conservation policies on their territories. In France, the establishment of the Commission on Forest Genetic Resources by the Ministry of Agriculture in 1989, and the subsequent preparation of its relevant programme, gave concrete expression to this commitment”.
Thus opens a 1999 work tracing the historical background and recent events concerning this awakening, authored by Michel Arbez who is, together with Georges Steinmetz (1991), the spiritual father of forest genetic resource conservation in France. The work reviews action under a coordinated national policy.
The groundwork for the gradual implementation of forest genetic resource policies in France over the past twelve years has involved a series of efforts to address this issue with a wide range of partners, including information, awareness-building and discussions, culminating in 1997 with the preparation of a National Charter which included the participation of many foresters in the public and private sector, as well as institutional partners. The Charter “proposes a framework for the organization of the national programme for the management and conservation of forest tree genetic resources”. A National Charter for the management of genetic resources published in 1999 covers in a more general way all living resources in the country.
This paper will briefly summarize the existing national conservation networks and their management, indicating a number of research and development prospects for subsequent action.