Some of the activities at CERN can be rustic. More than 65 CERN people discovered in November the horse-logging technique during a series of visits organized by the Education and Communication Group and the French National Forestry Office (ONF). During maintenance work on the CERN wooded plots, horses are regularly used to remove the fallen trees, thus minimizing the impact on forest soils. The CERN site covers 625 hectares, of which 90 are woods and forests. There is particular interest in seeing how efficiently the system will work in cleaning the complex losses from heavy-ion beam halos. These wooded areas are maintained and valued by the National Forestry Office.
