Forestry Work: a Key to Fighting Global Warming?

In March 2021, the National Forestry Office (ONF) shared on social media a photograph of the Minister of Agriculture marking a multi-hundred-year-old oak tree intended for the renovation of the frame of Notre-Dame de Paris. Marking, which forest rangers(1) carry out in public forests consists of designating the trees to be cut or protected via a hammer mark. It represents both the State’s hold(2) on the territory and a core symbol of the forestry profession. However, marking is changing: forest rangers, like their engineering and blue-collar colleagues, must overhaul their work techniques in light of global warming challenges and their decreasing workforce.

At the heart of a study(3)that took me to European, national, and regional administrations, as well as the cabins of mechanical harvesters, I will focus here on the work of forest rangers through marking. Indeed, this technical act is an ideal lens for understanding the State’s action on forests in a context of climatic uncertainty insofar as it constitutes a key decision-making moment in forest management. The study of work as an activity at the forest ranger level(4)allows for a better understanding of the materiality of public forestry action and the debates it involves. Tree Marking: the State’s Imprint on its Forests Carried out on average twice a week in regions with a forestry tradition such as the Vosges, it consists of designating the trees to be cut down (abandonment marking) and more rarely kept (reserve marking). The harvested trees allow other trees to grow; the retained trees, be they alive or dead, are valued for biodiversity (bird and insect habitats, etc.).

Marking is a collective activity that brings together all the members of a territorial unit who go out in a line and sweep the plots one after the other. The forest rangers follow the marking instructions given by their colleague in charge of the plot, according to the management document produced by the ONF’s territorial agency, which in turn must follow regional management directives and schemes, and national guidelines. Once a decision has been made on the fate of each assessed tree, it is marked using a forestry hammer, consisting of a hatchet on one side and a seal inscribed in Gothic letters ‘AF’ (for ‘Forestry Administration’) on the other. The marking is done in three stages. First, the guard removes a piece of bark with the edge of the hammer in a vertical movement (the flachis), then affixes the State’s seal at chest level so that it will be visible to colleagues and then to the loggers. Next, he repeats the operation at the foot of the tree, ‘at the collar’. T

his second sign allows the guard to do the ‘récollement’ afterwards, i.e. to control the cut, as the woodcutter must cut the tree above this mark. The guard can ensure that only the marked trees, chosen by his peers, were cut. If he notices unmarked stumps, he can fine the logging company. Thus, the marking embodies both the authority of the State (through the choice and control of operations) and the autonomy of field workers. The latter is based on their discretionary power over the trees and the independence of their forestry judgment, which is protected by the anonymity of the seal – that of the state. Decisions are made ‘for the sake of the forest’: the volumes of wood to be marked per hectare are proposed by a public, independent planner, and not by wood buyers. Therefore, marking is an act of the affirmation of the forest rangers’ expertise, as one of the foresters I met put it: marking ‘to the best of their knowledge and belief’ in the service of the State.

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