Sonian Forest - History

History

The forest is part of the scattered remains of the ancient Silva Carbonaria or Charcoal Forest. The first mention of the Sonian Forest (Soniaca Silva) dates from the early Middle Ages. Then the forest south of Brussels was crossed by the river Zenne/Senne and extended as far as Hainaut, covering most of the high ground between the Zenne and the Dijle. The ninth-century vita of Saint Foillan mentions "the forest, next to the abbey of Saint Gertrude, called the Sonesian" In the sixteenth century it was still seven leagues in circumference. At the start of the 19th century the area of the wood was still about 100 square kilometres, but due to wood cutting its area diminished to its current area of 44.21 km².

The Forest extended in the Middle Ages over the southern part of Brabant up to the walls of Brussels and is mentioned, under the name of Ardennes, in Byron's Childe Harold. Originally it was part of the Forest of Ardennes, the Romans' Arduenna Silva, and even at the time of the French Revolution it was very extensive. A major blow towards its nineteenth-century contraction was struck when Napoleon Bonaparte ordered 22,000 oaks to be cut down in it to build the Boulogne flotilla intended for the invasion of England. King William I of the Netherlands continued to harvest the woods, and from 29,000 acres (120 km2) in 1820 the forest was reduced to 11,200 in 1830. Rights to a considerable portion of the forest in the neighbourhood of Waterloo was assigned in 1815 to the Duke of Wellington, who is Prince of Waterloo in the Dutch nobility, and to the holder of the title as long as it endured; the present duke receives the equivalent of about $140,000 from his Belgian properties. This portion of the forest was only converted into farms in the time of the second duke. The Bois de la Cambre (456 acres) on the outskirts of Brussels was formed out of the forest in 1861. In 1911 the forest still stretched to Tervuren, Groenendaal, and Argenteuil close to Mont-Saint-Jean and Waterloo.

Today the forest consists mainly of European beeches and oaks. Several trees are more than 200 years old. Formerly the forest held the Abbey of Saint Foillan not far from Nivelles. The forest served for a long period as an exclusive hunting ground for the nobility, but today is open to the general public.

The forest contains a somewhat reduced fauna and flora. Due to human influence and impoverishment of the ecosystem various plants and animals have become extinct. The forest was home to 46 different mammal species. Of these seven have disappeared altogether: the brown bear (around 1000), the wolf (around 1810), the hazel dormouse (around 1842), the Red Deer, the badger and the hare. The boar was thought to have been extinct since 1957 but in 2007 new specimens were discovered roaming the wood. According to the Flemish Agency for Nature and Forest (ANB) this is unlikely to be a natural spread but probably two to four animals which most likely were either released or escaped from captivity.

The many species of bat in the forest led to it being classified as a Natura 2000 protected site.