Biodiversité et gestion des forêts : la France à la croisée des chemins

The way seemed to be promisingly open for the decade 2000 to become a period of the rich and shared implementation of practical and key developments in terms of forest biodiversity. Some steps forward have been made, especially in terms of protected areas both in overseas and mainland France, development of certification schemes and decentralisation. However, the emergence of the climate issue and the reduction in public funds and human resource allocations, among other reasons, slowed down the expected improvements. The 1999 and 2009 storms highlighted the low resilience of the dominant silvicultural model. In the area of climate change, short-term mitigation policies tend to overshadow guidelines aimed at long term adaptation and call on a partial approach that does not take into account the forest ecosystem as a whole. In fact, France’s commitments in respect of the EU and the resolutions that arose from the Grenelle consultations have strongly reintroduced the question of increasing wood harvesting into public debate, creating sharp new tensions in many forests, especially public ones. It was a difficult task to implement Natura 2000 on 10% of the forested area. This article is a review of 10 years of debate and practice relating to the introduction of biodiversity concerns into forest management in France. It describes some avenues for moving forward in the current decade.