Campfires in France: Where They’re Allowed and How to Leave No Trace

The rule: no fires in the woods or within 656 ft (200 m)

The day’s hike is wrapping up, the clearing is perfect, and someone’s already digging out a lighter and talking s’mores. That’s exactly the moment to slow down. In France, the basic rule is simple, and it applies year-round: France’s forestry code (Code forestier) bars anyone other than the landowner, or people holding their rights, from carrying or lighting a fire in woods and forests, or within 656 ft (200 m) of them [1].

Prefects, the national government’s representatives in each département (an administrative area much like a county), spell out and tighten this rule by local order (arrêté). The joint order for the Pays de la Loire region in western France, for example, applies it “at all times” to barbecues, spit roasts, braziers, campfires, and “any other form of fire,” and to smoking too, including on roads along or through the woods [2]. In Corsica, the island’s two prefects ban all use of fire every year from June 15 to September 30, for everyone, landowners included: campfires, but also stoves and barbecues, except within 16 feet (5 m) of a building with the brush cleared around it, running water, and electricity [3].

So where can you have a campfire?

The list is short, and that’s on purpose:

• On private land, with the landowner’s permission, as long as no prefectoral order bans it that day, and well away from any vegetation.
• At a designated, authorized fire site, as long as it hasn’t been closed by order itself during a fire-danger period [1].
• At a campground, only if its rules allow it, and only in the spot they set aside.

Backcountry camping in the woods and campfires rarely go together, then, even where camping itself is tolerated. A stove takes care of a hot dinner, and a headlamp takes care of light: a fire is a treat, not a necessity.

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Check the fire danger before you head out

Nine out of ten fires in France are started by people, mostly through carelessness [4]. Since 2023, Météo-France, the national weather service, has published the Météo des forêts (“forest weather”) every day during fire season: a map of the fire danger level for each département, for the next day and the day after, online and in its mobile app [4]. When the danger is high, prefectures can restrict or even ban access to at-risk areas, and ban barbecues and any use of fire [4].

Where it’s allowed: a fire that leaves no trace

The Leave No Trace principles, which the National Park Service has adopted for its visitors, apply anywhere [5]:

1. Choose a lightweight stove for cooking and a lantern for light.
2. Where fires are allowed, use an existing fire ring instead of building a new one.
3. Keep fires small.
4. Burn only dead wood that’s fallen to the ground, thin enough to break by hand.
5. Burn the wood all the way to ash, put the fire out completely, then scatter the cool ashes.

Add two safety rules: never leave a fire unattended, and keep water within reach. To put it out, use the same method as for a barbecue: drown the embers, stir them, and drown them again [1], until the ashes are cold.

Fire is one of the core bushcraft skills, right up there with finding and treating water and carrying a knife legally: an age-old skill that today comes with clear ground rules.

Worth watching

The Appalachian Trail Conservancy sums up the Leave No Trace fire rules this guide relies on: use a stove, build a fire only where it’s legal and in an existing ring, and burn only dead wood.

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Guillaume Hoarau

Camping, backpacking, bushcraft and hiking

Guillaume Hoarau writes for Outfarer about camping, backpacking, bushcraft, and hiking. A survival-skills buff and a collector of vintage field manuals, he loves clear explanations, lists that actually help and other people’s stories, which he tells well.

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