They are currently crisscrossing the Conches and Breteuil massif, in the Eure, in search of oaks.
Foresters need them to be 100 years old.
For a thousand-year-old cathedral.
Their mission?
Find the most beautiful specimens for the reconstruction of the Notre-Dame spire, ravaged by the terrible fire of 2019.
The trees are chosen according to their measurements (size, diameter) and their quality.
"Large
trees 50, 60, 80 or 90 cm in diameter and 8 to 14 meters in height
", detailed to France Inter François Hauet, forestry expert in Louviers.
In forest jargon, it is said that these oaks must be "led", that is to say that they are very long and straight.
Read also: Notre-Dame de Paris in search of good stones and good quarries for its restoration
Time is running out to put the famous Viollet-le-Duc arrow back to weightlessness before the end of 2024, as Emmanuel Macron decided.
The trunks should be sawn off and stay dry for 12 to 18 months.
To do so, the selected trees will be felled before the sap rises, ie at the end of this month of March.
“
This is the legacy of ancient forestry, not 20-year-old trees but very old trees.
Including plantations decided by former kings to carry out naval constructions and ensure the size of the French fleet, ”
explains Parisian Dominique de Villebonne, deputy director of the National Forestry Office (ONF).
Philippe Gourmain, forestry expert, member of France Bois Forêt and coordinator of the tree harvesting, agrees: “
It is a bit of a natural history of France that we are going to use to redo this historic framework.
“For the complete frame, a thousand trees are needed and the search for the most beautiful specimens should continue in the Perche.
Sandra Plantier, associate professor of geography and author of a column for Reporterre, sees this site as an aberration.
"
These thousand trees, one or several hundred years old, are as many cathedrals for the biodiversity of our forests that we are getting ready, for the first, to cut down at the very beginning of spring, even though they will nest there probably already birds and squirrels,
”she writes on the site of this specialized publication.
According to her, this "
stone building offered to God"
symbolized
"in a certain way in the 12th and 13th centuries the superiority of man over nature
".
A thought of another age according to her.
The National Forestry Office wants to be more reassuring about the environmental responsibility of its samples.
“
Along with these cut trees, we let others age for a very long time,”
assures Dominique de Villebonne.
And we are planting others so that subsequent generations can also create exceptional works. ”