Médéric de Vasselot de Régné

Comte Médéric de Vasselot de Régné (4 August 1837 – 23 April 1919) was a French-born forest officer trained at the National School of Forestry in Nancy, France, and appointed as Superintendent of Woods and Forests in South Africa in 1880. Médéric and his elder brother Marin Gabriel were sons of Jean Gabriel Charles Auguste de Vasselot de Régné (1780–1842) and Eugénie Gabrielle Elisabeth Selima Vasselot de la Chesnaye (1807–1879).

Since the earliest days of European settlement at the Cape, the indigenous forests of the southern Cape were used as a seemingly inexhaustible source of timber and fuel. From 1652 when Jan van Riebeeck landed at the Cape until the 1880s, the forests and the fauna they supported were despoiled in the same way as those of the United States and Australia, with little or no thought given to sustainability. About 1776 a woodcutting centre was established at George, a step which heralded a century of plundering of the surrounding forests. An improved road between Swellendam and George saw an ever-increasing number of settlers and adventurers eager to participate in the timber boom. The perception was that of an unlimited resource, leading to excessively wasteful practices where only the choicest grades and sizes of timber were removed, and the majority of cut trees were simply left to rot.

In 1778, the Governor Joachim van Plettenberg inspected the region and was appalled at the destruction. As a result Johann Fredrick Meeding was appointed Resident at Plettenberg Bay in an effort to instil some form of control over the cutting. Meeding diligently performed his duties and his post survived a number of successive changes of government which followed British occupation of the Cape in 1795. Even so, no new conservation measures were introduced, and when Graaff-Reinet was founded in 1786 the timber boom resumed with wholesale cutting of the forests between George and Knysna, the official founding of George in 1811 aggravating the destruction. A further burden on the forests was the Royal Navy's extraction of timber to meet the needs of the dockyard at Simonstown, a situation which lasted until 1825 when iron saw an increasing use in boat-building. The withdrawal of the Navy's workers led to an immediate occupation of the vacated areas by new woodcutters. The start of the Great Trek in 1836 caused new waves of cutters from the Langkloof to invade the forests of the Tsitsikamma in the Humansdorp area. To make matters worse the Government decided in 1846 to sell the worked-out forests as agricultural lots. Of the remaining forest only a narrow strip stretching between the Keurbooms and Kaaimans Rivers were under State control and the local magistrate issued felling permits to woodcutters in an attempt to gather as much revenue as possible. By 1847 the situation had become so critical that all Crown Forests were declared closed. A Conservator of Forests was appointed assisted by 4 rangers. This protection was short-lived and in 1856 the forests were re-opened.

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