Background of the association

DFCI Aquitaine is a hundred-year-old organization that was established in the late 19th century by forest owners; it is currently run and managed by silviculturists.
Until World War II, DFCI owners' associations were alone responsible for preventing, but also, with no fire brigade available, for directly fighting forest fires, with often inadequate resources.
The French 28 April 1945 order made these DFCI associations mandatory in the entire Landes de Gascogne region.
In 1946, with the participation of forest owners and all its users, they set up specific financial resources (Landes de Gascogne provident fund, national forest fund) that would make it possible to conduct forest prevention, development and partition work.
After the great fires of 1947 and 1949, faced with the urgency and magnitude of the efforts required to save what was still intact and to rebuild the destroyed forests, roles were separated:

• DFCI associations took charge of prevention work and land development,
• the fire brigade became responsible for actively fighting fires.

The Associations Syndicales de Défense des Forêts Contre les Incendies, associations of silviculturists, thus undertook veritable compartmentation work in the forest massif.

Departmental forest fire brigades were created by the French 25 May 1947 decree, and were put in charge of fighting fires and monitoring the forest.

Starting in this period, efforts to restock Maritime Pine were scaled up in the Aquitaine region.
At the same time, the fire protection system in place, which combined prevention with active control, proved to be effective, as the average surface area burned by forest fires in the Landes de Gascogne forest decreased.