By Benoît Haberbusch (major), PhD in History, French Gendarmerie Officers Academy Research Centre (CREOGN)

"On August 20, 2022, the Minister of the Interior, Gérald Darmanin, announced the launch of a "green gendarmerie" to fight fires caused by arsonists. His ambitious goal is to train 3,000 gendarmes in ecological offenses so that each gendarmerie station can have one at their disposal, emphasizing that "it will be a revolution"1.

In reality, the French national gendarmerie invested very early in the environmental field with a policy of specialized training for its personnel, as early as 1993, through the Environmental Ecology Relay Trainers (FREE), and then the Central Office for the Fight against Environmental and Public Health Violations (OCLAESP), created in 2004. However, while environmental protection already has its historians, research in this field is still limited for the national gendarmerie. And yet, its archives offer an unsuspected potential for a promising project. (...)"

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