Les trames verte et bleue. Un projet du Grenelle de l’environnement qui concerne les forestiers

The green and blue threads (trames verte et bleue, referred to as TVB) are a major biodiversity and spatial planning project resulting from the Grenelle environmental conference whereby France belatedly took on board the concept of “ecological network”, a terminology that is used everywhere else in the world. This project for the preservation or restoration of ecological connectance places particular emphasis on forest environments and species, but also on the functional quality of biodiversity reservoirs in forests and attempts to remedy the limitations of conventional policies for protecting species and natural habitats. This approach must naturally rely on several decades of past scientific research as well as on innovation arising from cooperation and partnerships so as to properly consider the inherent spatial planning dimension it implies. A variety of initiatives of this type had already been implemented at various levels (the regions, departments, inter-municipal and municipal levels) prior to the Grenelle Environmental conference. This presents the dual advantage of the input of the 18 European countries that preceded us in this direction can be drawn from as well as from these efforts to adapt to the French ecological, economic, social and political context. The TVB operational committee uses this basis to propose several methodological guides to the partners involved in territorial projects but underscores the need for periodical adaptation of these guides on the basis of the knowledge acquired and on how effectively they are appropriated.