Forest Laws

10 Key excerpts on "Forest Laws"

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  The Invention of Sustainability

  Nature and Destiny, c.1500–1870

  • Paul Warde(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  These reserves were linked to other strategic industries such as metal-smelting or salt production that focused the interest of rulers of landlocked regions on wood resources in a way that shipping did in the maritime world. The ‘forest’ laws of various territories, whether (as in England) they pertained to particular localised jurisdictions within the realm, or the polity as a whole, were initially intended to encourage and pro- tect a population of game for the noble sport of the chase. But they also gave rulers an avenue into, and interest in, regulating the use of trees and woodlands. In these cases we must distinguish between the 61 / Wood 61 use of ‘forest’ as a general term to describe wooded areas, and the much more specific sense of the ‘forest’ rights of rulers that related to jurisdiction over hunting, and restricted any activity that might limit opportunities to hunt. In England the ‘Forest Laws’ pertained only to those areas designated as Royal Forests and that in theory at least were subject to separate juridical systems in matters covered by those laws. These districts, such as Dean, the New Forest, Sherwood or Alice Holt, did have large stands of trees but they were far from being densely wooded. In England legislation that dealt with the state of the woods more generally was about ‘timber’, and was not part of forest law. In other territories, ‘forest’ (Forst, Fôret) regulation more frequently had wood supplies as a central preoccupation, even if the sport of the chase was also important. Wood was of course not a single product with undifferentiated qualities, as the reference above to the needs of the navy makes clear. Every species had its particular virtues and habitats, although it would be a mistake to think they were always put to the most ‘appropriate’ use; people used what was to hand.

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  Wessex: A Landscape History

  • Hadrian Cook(Author)
  • 2024(Publication Date)
  • Archaeopress Archaeology

    (Publisher)

  The ordinary manorial court process continued within the New Forest, with Forest Laws supplementing the common law, rather than replacing it. 56 The first surviving legal texts relating to the Forest Laws that date from 1100, at the very start of the reign of Henry I (reigned 1100-1135). 57 Offences included clearing of land (illegal assarts), cutting of wood, burning, hunting, carrying of bows and spears in the forest, and loosing of livestock; there were also rules relating to de-clawing of dogs and the discovery of hide or flesh in the forest. Subsequent monarchs, especially Henry II (reigned 1154– 1189) were most enthusiastic about their implementation. Henry in part codified the existing laws under the Assize of the Forest (1184) and he introduced a system of courts, the highest being called the Forest Eyre. 58 Forest Laws were restricted to specific areas and were fundamentally about securing preservation of game for the Crown. 59 No original draft of the laws has survived from Norman times, 60 and, although scholars argue about dating and the provenance of material included within, the earliest known version of the Forest Laws probably relates to the Assize of the Forest (or Woodstock) from 1184, and is thus thought to be from the reign on Henry II. 61 The 1166 Assize of Clarendon was concerned with producing an evidentiary legal system, and hence is significant in the development of English Law. The Assize of the Forest appears to summarise previous laws. Punishments included blinding and mutilation, but it is debatable as to whether these were ever followed through, the main objective now being to raise revenue for the Crown. The first article states 62 : ‘First he forbids that that anyone shall transgress against him in regard to his hunting rights or his forests in any respect; and he wills that no trust shall be put in the fact that hitherto he has had mercy for the sake of their chattels upon those who have 55 S.

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  Deer and People

  • Karis Baker, Ruth Carden, Richard Madgwick, Naomi Sykes, Karis Baker, Ruth Carden, Richard Madgwick(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Windgather Press

    (Publisher)

  Landscapes 18 Forest Law in the Landscape: Not the clearing of the woods, but the running of the deer? John Langton Introduction In a forest, wild animals were preserved for hunting exclusively by its lord. Within precisely bounded territories, stretching across land held and used by other people for all other purposes, forest law protected hunting quarry (mainly deer) known as ‘venison’, and the vegetation in which they fed, bred and sheltered known as ‘vert’. They existed throughout Europe (Schama 1995, 237–242; Jones 2010), but it was ‘in the England of the Norman kings ... that the creation of royal forests … was most extensive and their protection most stringent’ (Bloch 1961, 303): the supposedly pre-Norman Constitutions of the Forest (1016) were probably forged in the reign of Henry I (Stubbs 1921, 185), whose own forest regulations were reaffirmed in 1184 by Henry II’s Assize of the Forest (Douglas and Greenaway 1953, 417–20). This code was ameliorated and amended by the Charter of the Forest in 1217 (Ruffhead 1769, 11–15), then by 160 more statutes before forest law was abrogated by the Wild Creatures and Forest Laws Act in 1971 [19&20 Eliz. II c. 52]. These laws are customarily treated as irksome impediments to the efforts of homo economicus to manage woods for commercial timber production, or, mainly, to clear them in order to grow crops. Therefore, in so far and for as long as they were adhered to, they ensured ‘a retarded landscape’ (Broad and Hoyle 1997, 48). The aim here is to examine these haunts of homo ludens in their own terms, as areas deliberately set aside and conserved for the running of deer (Young 1978). Land subject to forest law Forest law did not apply only to the 60 – 70 ‘royal forests’ usually identified (Young 1979, 62, 152; Grant 1991, 221–229; Hoyle 1992, 356). It is said that forests must

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  Globalisation and Change in Forest Ownership and Forest Use

  Natural Resource Management in Transition

  • E. Carina H. Keskitalo(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  Prior to the Middle Ages, local people living in or on the fringe of forested land considered the surrounding forest as communal property to be used for the provision of fuel, building material, forest meat, grazing and other non-wood forest products. Consequently, they developed a strong conviction, which in the case of England was protected by law, that they had customary rights to use the forest (Nylund and Ingemarsson G. Lidestav et al. 265 2007). In, for example, England, France, Germany and Sweden, attempts to repress or cancel these rights often caused great dissent until the rural culture was replace by an urban culture. Yet, the feudal power structure that evolved in Medieval Europe, paired with the recognition that forest had a value, resulted in much of the forest ending up in the hands of the aristocracy and the church (Sands 2005). However, there are many exam- ples of community ownership, rights and responsibilities in early European forest management (Jeanrenaud 2001; Bravo and de Moor, 2008). Without romanticising these institutions, it can be said that they provided access to resources for many rural people (Jeanrenaud 2001). The forces of modernisation that swept through Europe from the seven- teenth century gradually undermined these institutions, as the commons were regarded as an obstacle to progress. Privatisation of the commons and liquidation of customary rights meant a major interruption of tradi- tional forms of community-based forest management. In some areas, they were replaced by newly formed commune or municipal forests. However, as the direct decision-making was taken away from villagers, this was frequently met with resistance. In other areas, loss of access to forest resources was somehow, in the material sense, compensated for by employment in industries and the rise of the modern welfare state, which provided material benefits in exchange for loss of local control (Nylund and Ingemarsson 2007; Jeanrenaud 2001).

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  Law and Society

  A Sociological Approach

  • James J. Chriss(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • SAGE Publications, Inc

    (Publisher)

  royal forest emerged shortly after the Norman Conquest of the 11th century. Severe punishments (most notably, blinding and mutilation) were imposed against anyone who poached the king’s deer or boar, as well as against those who appropriated timber or grasslands that provided food and cover for these animals (Manning, 1993). Indeed, the forest has continued to be a battleground for law, politics, and policymaking since that time, and we will return to some aspects of the politics of forest policy in the United States later in the chapter.

  In that Norman Conquest, it was William the Conqueror who introduced to England the concept of foresta, namely, the specification of lands where hunting was permitted (by nobles or select members of the gentry, but typically out of the reach of those lower in social standing), with draconian sanctions levied against violators. By the latter part of the 12th century, the royal forests covered one-third of England. These laws were so contentious that a second set of laws was established after the Magna Carta, the so-called Charter of the Forest (enacted in 1217), which went some way toward the democratization of access to the forests and reducing penalties against those previously barred from participation (Green, 2013). Reflecting this democratization, there was eventually established in England and later Scotland and Wales the practice of offering paid hunting licenses, which were made available to anyone who could afford them (Langton, 2011).

  However, with the extension of hunting privileges to wider classes of citizens, there were also more formalizations regarding what was permissible in hunts and chases, the latter of which transformed hunting into a game or sport whereby more stringent rules were put into place regarding weaponry, kill limits, and use of dogs to assist tracking and retrieval of game. For example, dogs that were big enough to kill deer were required to have their claws removed, presumably to reduce the chances of such a kill taking place. Additionally, fences or barriers could not be erected for purposes of trapping game. The right to enclose or limit the movement of wild game was restricted to lords of manors (Langton, 2015).

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  Conflicts over Natural Resources

  A Reference Handbook

  • Jacqueline Vaughn(Author)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • ABC-CLIO

    (Publisher)

  The Digest of Justinian and the Institutes of Justinian, named for the 4 Background and History ruling emperor of the time, contained specific reference to com- mon property resources, or res communes, which were owned by and open to everyone (Adams 1993). During the Middle Ages, there was general agreement that forests were to remain wild, with little attention paid to their value for production. There were separate forest courts and a complicated hierarchy of officials responsible for the conditions of the forests, enforcing grazing regulations and monitoring the availability of game for hunting. Laws governed the clearance of land, the cutting of tree limbs, and the building of ponds. This led to conflicts between the monarchy and freeholders (landowners) as land was reserved for royal forests through unofficial routes of acquisition. By A.D. 1217 the disputes, driven largely by the eco- nomic impact of the Crusades and foreign wars, led to revisions in forest law and the issuance of the Carta de Foresta, which would later become part of the Magna Carta. While the codification of forest law could be seen as benefiting some, lands that had previ- ously been protected quickly became open to timber cutting, es- pecially during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when wood was needed for ships for trade and exploration. What may have started as land reform ended up as mismanagement driven by greed and corruption (ibid.). Colonial America Early settlers found that Europeans expected the New World to be a source of materials to meet their needs, whether spices, tim- ber, or meat. There was a kind of grocery-store mentality that left the impression among some that America was a storehouse that could be raided as often as necessary. What is more important, colonists imported laws and customs that governed land owner- ship, something foreign to the native tribes that had lived there for centuries before European settlement.

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  Development of Environmental Laws in India

  • Kanchi Kohli, Manju Menon(Authors)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  While central and state governments claim ownership and control of forest lands and forest produce, tribal and forest-dwelling communities have mounted challenges to these claims. Communities who live in forest regions Forest Reservation and Conservation 89 and are dependent on forests for their socio-economic and cultural purposes have resisted being alienated from forest governance. Since 2006, the regulatory jurisdiction on forests is not limited to the central and state governments alone but includes local self-governments such as gram panchayats, autonomous district councils and gram sabhas (village assemblies). The setting of forest boundaries, transfer of forest land ownership or use and compensating forest loss are matters that have attracted intense legal scrutiny. While the Indian Parliament and the executive have shaped forest legislations in India, the judiciary has exerted a strong influence on forest policies and the administration of forests. Since 1995, the Supreme Court has retained a continuing mandamus 1 on forest-related laws and decisions, especially through the Godavarman case which is discussed in detail in Section III of this chapter. This has allowed several regulatory aspects of Forest Laws to be substantially interpreted through judicial orders in cases where specific administrative directions were challenged or where the Court took suo moto cognizance of forest-related matters. The legal framework on forests serve five functions: creating and managing forest reserves, regulating the access and use of forest produce, penalising forest destruction, regulating forest diversion and recognising forest rights. These are realised through a slew of statutes including the Indian Forest Act (IFA), 1927, and corresponding state forest legislations; the Forest Conservation Act (FCA), 1980; the Compensatory Afforestation Fund Act, 2016; and the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006.

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  The Continuity of the Conquest

  Charlemagne and Anglo-Norman Imperialism

  • Wendy Marie Hoofnagle(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Penn State University Press

    (Publisher)

  H. G. Richardson and G. O. Sayles have shown that “abundant entries in the pipe rolls make it plain that the law can rarely have been enforced in all its rigour, though the menace of mutilation lay ev- erlastingly in the background. Did we not know the [Assize of Woodstock of 1184], we should, on the evidence of the pipe rolls, regard the forest law and forest eyres primarily as a source of revenue in the twelfth century, and it is hard to escape the conclusion that within a very few years the motive of gain came to outweigh any other consideration.” 53 Certainly, William Rufus came The Continuity of the Conquest 98 quickly to recognize the forest’s potential for financial gain and expanded the afforestation of territory from that of his father’s reign, which Henry I would later retract in his coronation charter. 54 William Rufus also accused fifty men of taking deer from one of his forests, an accusation which Eadmer later claimed was solely for the purpose of defrauding these remaining English nobility of their money. 55 Whether or not Eadmer’s claims about William’s perfidy are true, his words remain as eloquent testimony to the anxiety and resentment within monastic circles that could result from forest law and its administration. What is additionally striking about the chroniclers’ accounts is how quickly the king and his court became symbolically associated with the forest as a result of the controversy surrounding it. As I discussed in the case of the castles, certain landscapes become emblematic of a particular kind of place that has resonance among the populace, rather than being associated with any specific locality. This is also true of the New Forest, which promptly came to represent the tyranny of all the royal forests in England and the restrictive bu- reaucracy and laws associated with them. In its ideal sense, however, the forest came to be an extension of the king and his court through his ability to exert his authority over man and beast alike.

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  Managing the Unknown

  Essays on Environmental Ignorance

  • Frank Uekötter, Uwe Lübken, Frank Uekötter, Uwe Lübken(Authors)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Berghahn Books

    (Publisher)

  CHAPTER FOUR Forest Law in Mandate Palestine Colonial Conservation in a Unique Context David B. Schorr

  T he management of forests, a highly visible and seemingly knowable resource, would seem to leave very little to the realm of “the unknown.” Since the eighteenth century, foresters have counted and measured trees, calculated sustainable yields, and administrated forests in an efficient and planned manner. Yet even with this resource, managers and policymakers may be afflicted with lack of knowledge about crucial facts, unknowns which may determine the way in which forests reserves are developed, preserved, and exploited.

  Historians such as Richard Grove and Gregory Barton have emphasized the central place of “empire forestry” in the emergent environmentalism of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.1 Two themes in their work will engage us in this chapter: one, the role of forestry in the imperial environmental mind in combating climate change; the other, the relationship between state and private property in the legal management of forests. The history of Palestine forest law may lead to modification of the conventional wisdom on these issues, demonstrating how scientific and legal unknowns may channel forest policy in undesirable directions.

  Law for the Unknown Forest

  Is this the city that men call The perfection of beauty, The joy of the whole earth? —Lamentations 2:15 When General Allenby’s troops advanced across Palestine in 1917–1918, the landscape that greeted them was not at all what they had expected. The journal of an English cavalry regiment hymned: Jerusalem the Golden With milk and honey blest; Where is that milk and honey?

  It seemed to have “gone West.”2

  Bitter humor in Biblical style found expression, too, in “A Fragment from the hitherto unknown Book of Eisodus , or the ‘Journey In,’ presumed to be some form of historical sequel to the Book of Exodus or the ‘Journey Out,’” printed in the Palestine News :

  1. Behold, now I enter the Promised Land, whereof much hath been spoken, both by our fathers and our fathers’ fathers, yea, and their fathers also, saying:

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  Lose to Gain

  Is Involuntary Resettlement a Development Opportunity?

  • Jayantha Perera(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Asian Development Bank

    (Publisher)

  But lower courts continue to take the view that municipal law under the statute takes precedence over the rights or privileges that are recognised under customary practices or conventions.” This ambiguity in interpreting the customary rights of forest dwellers and other tribal peoples frequently surfaces in Indian jurisprudence. However, in the following two cases, the Supreme Court has established some firm interpretation of the interests of forest dwellers over forestland and its produce. In Godavarman Thirumulpad vs. Union of India (1997), the Supreme Court liberally interpreted “forest,” establishing a watershed in forest protection and conservation in India. It held that “forest” is not only to be understood in the dictionary sense of the word, but also as any land area designated as forest in government records. It held that the Forest (Conservation) Act of 1980 applies to all forests, irrespective of whether they are public or private and irrespective of the nature of their other classifications. It also held that sawmills and mining are nonforest activities, and prior permission must be obtained from the central government before embarking on such activities. It directed each state government to ensure the cessation of such unapproved activities in forest areas. The Supreme Court imposed on each state government the responsibility to report on the number of sawmills and their capacity, proximity to the nearest forest, and sources of timber. The court also imposed a complete ban on the felling of trees in tropical wet evergreen forests and on the movement of timber with the exception of certified timber required for defense purposes. It ordered each state government to constitute an expert committee to identify forest areas, denuded forests, and areas covered with plantation trees, and to assess the sustainable capacity of forest sawmills. Plantations were barred from further expansion and forests encroachment through clearing or other means

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