State Forestry in Belgium Since the End of the Eighteenth Century
/ CHAPTER 3 State Forestry in Belgium since the End of the Eighteenth Century Pierre-Alain Tallier, Hilde Verboven, Kris Vandekerkhove, Hans Baeté and Kris Verheyen Forests are a key element in the structure of the landscape. Today they cover about 692,916 hectares, or about 22.7 per cent of Belgium. Unevenly distributed over the country, they constitute one of Belgium’s rare natural resources. For centuries, people have shaped these forests according to their needs and interests, resulting in the creation of man- aged forests with, to a greater or lesser extent, altered structure and species composition. Belgian forests have a long history in this respect. For millennia, they have served as a hideout, a place of worship, a food storage area and a material reserve for our ancestors. Our predecessors not only found part of their food supply in forests, but used the avail- able resources (herbs, leaves, brooms, heathers, beechnuts, acorns, etc.) to feed and to make their flocks of cows, goats and sheep prosper. Above all, forests have provided people with wood – a natural and renewable resource. As in many countries, depending on the available trees and technological evolutions, wood products have been used in various and multiple ways, such as heating and cooking (firewood, later on charcoal), making agricultural implements and fences (farmwood), and constructing and maintaining roads. Forests delivered huge quan- tities of wood for fortification, construction and furnishing, pit props, naval construction, coaches and carriages, and much more. Wood remained a basic material for industrial production up until the begin- ning of the nineteenth century, when it was increasingly replaced by iron, concrete, plastic and other synthetic materials.
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