Recrue d'Essences

Introduction to the Association

The association Recrue d'Essences brings together residents of the Livradois-Forez Regional Natural Park. Based and active in and around Cunlhat, its objective is to promote irregular silviculture that respects the environment and reasoned human activities.

Not long ago, a few decades back, the lower Livradois was primarily bocage: meadows, fields, ponds, and marshes interwoven with numerous hedges.

After the war, following rural exodus, farmers were encouraged to replace their crops or meadows with monoculture coniferous "silviculture," akin to cereal fields. Since then, forest monoculture has proven its limitations and harms (soil impoverishment, fauna and flora depletion, lack of light, acidification...).

Thus, due to its recent history, our territory lacks specific experience in forest management, unlike other regions (Jura...).

Like these other areas, the Recrue d'Essences association believes in the possibility of supporting a forest rich in biodiversity at all levels (wide variety of species, staggered ages of trees, richness of fauna and flora) while promoting better economic management.

In this territory, we are all connected to the forest for various reasons and do not wish to oppose humans to the natural environment that surrounds them and from which they originate. Instead, we seek to develop a mutually enriching, intelligent coexistence. Irregular silviculture meets these criteria.

To achieve this, we implement a number of actions, including the following main axes:

- Dissemination of information (flyers, website, presence at events...)
- Purchase of forest parcels (concretely combining environmental preservation and wood production, promoting gentle transitions respectful of soils and ecosystems)
- Enabling sector professionals to intervene in forests (logging, skidding, etc.) while supporting and valuing quality work
- Supporting forest owners
- Organizing events
- Training

The Project to Purchase Forest Parcels:

In the commune of Domaize (Puy-de-Dôme): it's a 0.7ha parcel on the hillsides of the Dore river on a collinean stage of the oak-hornbeam forest. It was formerly a Douglas fir stand cut down five years ago (see photo). Brooms and elderberries have mostly colonized the parcel. We wish to let natural regeneration take place, as the interest of this small parcel is that it is surrounded by a lot of 80-year-old deciduous parcels that we will acquire in the coming weeks. This allows for ecological continuity.

In the commune of Auzelles (Puy-de-Dôme): we are also considering a lot of forest parcels on a mountain stage of the beech-fir forest (see photo). It is a wet, even peaty, soil populated by spruces, rowan trees, willows, birches. The interest of these parcels is their juxtaposition with a stream, the Miodet, which presents ecological interest.