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National Forests Office (France)

a French public institution responsible for the management of public forests

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ3260938 ↗
Source-derived summary

The National Forests Office (French: Office national des forêts), or ONF, is a Government of France agency that manages the state forests, city forests and biological reserves. ONF is based in Paris.

The office is responsible for the sustainable management of France's approximately 10 million hectares of public forests. The ONF takes over their protection and carries out forestry policing tasks. Around 9,000 civil servants work at the ONF and its regional offices. ONF is under legislation of Ministère de l'Agriculture and Ministère de la Transition écologique et solidaire.

History

ONF was founded in 1964. Since 1980, almost a third of the ONF workforce has been cut. The agency had gone through a series of structural reforms in the 2000s. Le Monde reported in 2012 that 30 forest officials took their own lives between 2002 and 2012.

Editorial summary

“National Forests Office (France)” enters the record as a French public institution responsible for the management of public forests. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what National, Forests and Office can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewMost valuable as an event-and-institution map that identifies actors, dates and record creators for deeper historical inquiry. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1964, 1980, 2012, 2002—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1964-12-23. Its strongest next move is a source search built around National, Forests and Office.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“National Forests Office (France)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, National, Forests and Office provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3260938. VIAF identifies the subject as 155483671. The Library of Congress control number is n50069564. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1964, 1980, 2012 and 2002.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “National Forests Office (France)”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow National Forests Office (France) primary sources, National Forests Office (France) archive and National research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “National Forests Office (France)”?
  2. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
  3. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “National Forests Office (France)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.