DFCM – Alpine forests in crisis

The broadcast on France 2 on November 8, 2022 of a “telethon for trees”, which raised over 2 million euros for France Nature Environnement (FNE), attests to a renewed interest in the subject of forests. The program offers a mainly naturalistic and aesthetic vision of this “natural” space. This viewpoint is not new: it has been part of the imagination of urban populations since the end of the 19th century. Introducing the program, Léa Salamé sets out the evening’s objective: “To explain why trees are our best friends, our best allies in the fight against global warming”.

In recent years, the forest has been given a new role as a tool in the fight against climate change, leading to renewed public interest. This context is creating new difficulties for players in the forestry sector, who are seeing their actions called into question by users who may have little knowledge of Alpine forest socio-ecosystems. Such criticism seems paradoxical in public forests, where the overlapping of ecological, silvicultural and landscape functions is not incompatible.

This research project, Des Forêts en Crise? Challenges and public issues surrounding a mountain socio-ecosystem (DFCM) examines these conflicts. How do they result from a dissonance between perceptions and representations of the forest as “nature par excellence”, socio-ecological dynamics and silvicultural practices in the environment?

The project aims to gain a better understanding of these dissonances, in order to facilitate the transition processes underway in the forestry sector, by implementing inter- and trans-disciplinary methods based on a field approach with the stakeholders concerned.