Mountain land restoration - Haute Savoie

The map provides access to the geolocated pictures of this collection, with a navigation by municipality. For each municipality, you will find all the photographs taken in that particular area.

Access to the digitized documents

This photographic collection, kept in the archives of the Inrae centre in Grenoble, comes from the École nationale des eaux et forêts (ENEF) in Nancy, which became an internal school of AgroParisTech in 2007.

This corpus of approximately 2,000 photographs was mainly used for instruction purposes. The origin of the transfer from Nancy to Grenoble remains unclear, but it was probably linked to professional mobility.

The photos of the main glacier fronts of the Mont Blanc massif make up a large part of this collection. It also includes photos related to RTM (Restauration des Terrains en Montagne = mountain land restoration) taken by forest service officers during their tours.

The 1599 photos from the RTM collection of Haute Savoie held in the national archives were put online in the summer of 2025.

On the same subject

  • Leading figures of moutain land restoration: Paul Mougin
    Photograph of Demontzey, in the Alps

    Leading figures of moutain land restoration: Paul Mougin

    The history of France’s mountain land restoration services (RTM) has been profoundly influenced by a number of personalities with remarkable talents, among them Paul Mougin, a pioneer in glaciology.

  • Fewer sheep, more dairies
    Dairy school at Marignac, 1899, Haute-Garonne
    Mountainous Area

    Fewer sheep, more dairies

    At the end of the 19th century, the policy of restoring land in the mountains imposes the reforestation of traditional rangelands, which entails the expropriation of peasants and prohibits them from grazing their sheep and goats. Faced with this unfavourable situation for mountain dwellers, some foresters encourage them to develop cattle rearing, which enables them to produce butter and cheese, processed products that provide a better income.