gone; the pressures came from timber needed for house construction and shipbuilding downstream, and for charcoal. In 1613 a decree from the Conseil du Roi specified that the products of Rouvray and other woods nearby should be limited to the uses of Rouen, but in the seventeenth century, tile-works and pottery kilns set up round the edges of the forest were consuming its timber for fuel. The oaks were replaced by birch; but fern, bracken and broom invaded the depleted soils, and the aristocratic owners were replaced by local bourgeois who saw the woodlands as a resource. At the time of the reordering of the badly cut-over forest in 1669, it was estimated that the oldest of the trees was about twenty years old, with most growth ranging from eight to fourteen years. Little was done to stem the erosion of the forests; the wars of Louis XIV took their share of timber of any size, and the cold winters of the "Little Ice Age" required firewood for Rouen. By 1750, three of every eight arpents () of "forest" was actually irremediably turned to open wasteland and heath on the impoverished soils. That was the year that Nicolas Roneau, Grand maître des eaux et de forêts began planting open heath with chestnuts and pines— the first planted pine woodlands in Normandy— as a first step towards a managed forest. The Revolution saw the woodlands informally exploited once more, as a "public good", but the introduction of British coal for industrial purposes in the nineteenth century was what really saved the remaining reserves of woodland. In the twentieth century, the Second World War, the construction of highways, the new phenomena of forest fires and acid rain, which selectively weakened conifers, have also taken their toll. Nevertheless, a third of the territory of the Rouennais () is wooded, in one of the most densely forested regions of northwest France. Modern day Today the remnant termed the forêt de La Londe-Rouvray, "La Londe" reserved for the western section, is protected by a decree of 18 March 1993, supplemented by a decree of 14 September 2006. A public, informative demonstration Maison des forêts, built by Agglo de Rouen (the agglomération rouennaise) to Haute qualité environnementale (HQE, "High environmental quality") standards, was opened in March 2008. See also List of forests in France Notes Forests of France Geography of Seine-Maritime Tourist attractions in Seine-Maritime