Forges of Paimpont were the most important wood-fueled forges of Brittany, operating from the 16th century until the end of the 19th century. Their location was enabled by the proximity of an open-cast deposit of iron ore at Gelée (a site near the village of Paimpont), the existence of a major river system, and the easy supply of locally produced charcoal. The forest was overexploited for the needs of the forges. During the French Revolution, the abolition of protection triggered massive clear-cutting of the forest as the wood was excessively exploited to power charcoal the blast furnaces of local industry. In 1804, the prefect of the department wrote that the forest at Paimpont was in a state of degradation and threatened by complete destruction. In 1875, the forest was bought from Prince Philippe, Count of Paris by shipowner and industrialist Louis Levesque, for rest and pleasure. The new owner created the Domaine de Paimpont and organized hunts of wild boars and deer. Exploitation of the forest by the local population was limited to be only under licenses and the supervision of private forest rangers. Between the two World Wars, the forest was part of the hunting grounds of the Duke of Westminster. During World War I, the forest, deprived of most of its guards, was affected by major fires of unknown origin. In World War II, paratroopers of the SAS of Free France were dropped to join the partisans of the FFI in the forest with the mission of delaying German reinforcements as part of the Normandy landings in 1944. In the 1990s, a dam project on the Aff for the water supply of the Rennes region caused controversy and protests before being abandoned. The forest has experienced many fires since the start of the 20th century. In September 1990, a large wildfire devastated 450 hectares of the forest of Paimpont, especially the area of the Val sans retour, raging for five days. Afterward, from 1991 to 1992, thousands of volunteers planted more than a half-million new trees. Other major fires have occurred in 1955, 1984, 2003, and in particular in 1976, when a fire ravaged a thousand hectares. Another massive blaze (preceded by a lesser one started by a man illegally burning garden waste two months earlier) occurred during three days in August 2022 as part of the 2022 European wildfires, which completely destroyed nearly 400 hectares of woodlands