Speakers & moderators

Laurent Tillon is a tree lover. It is with one of them that he finds his vocation for the preservation of forests as a teenager. He joined the National Forestry Office at the end of 1998, to inventory the fauna of the Rambouillet forest, mainly amphibians, insects and bats. The storm of the end of 1999 crosses France and modifies the perception that one can have of the functioning of the forest ecosystems: and if the biodiversity could play a central role in the management of the forests? This mantra became his guiding principle.

He joined the general management of the ONF in 2005, and now leads the study and conservation of biodiversity on a national scale. This position allowed him to defend a doctoral thesis in 2015 on the links between bats and forests with a view to conservation, a subject which he has made his specialty. In 2021, he published the story of the tree from which his vocation was born in the book "Être un chêne" (Being an oak) published by Actes Sud (Mondes Sauvages collection).