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Forest
Forest – a marginal factor during the 19th century– today occupies a predominant place in the landscape of the Cévennes National Park. It continues to expand to the detriment of grasslands abandoned as grazing grounds. Its appearance varies greatly according to its history, the bedrock and the spaces that it occupies.
Forests marked by history and humanity
Cévenol forests are mostly young. Centuries of over-exploitation – for charcoal, glassmaking, timber or fire wood – have decimated forests that were wrongly thought of as being inexhaustible. Not quite a century ago, forests were reduced to a few fragments on the most inaccessible slopes.
Diverse forests
The National Park’s forests are extremely varied, ranging from holm-oak copses to beech-fir groves in the mountains. This diversity is due to altitude, the type of rock and the forest’s age.
A heritage to be preserved
The evolution of the forest has encouraged the return or new arrival of various animal and plant species. Such is case of the black woodpecker, now seen regularly, or the Tengmalm owl, several nesting sites of which have been spotted.
The national Park’s forest policy
In order to preserve the abundance and diversity of its forests, the Cévennes National Park depends on its own regulations and on work carried out in partnership with forest- management institutions: notably the Regional Centre for Forest Property (CRPF) and the National Forestry Office (ONF).