French foresters are becoming more and more aware of climate change, which will most likely impact the forests they care for in the future. One forest management option to adapt French forests to climate change is planting and changing the forest composition. The national representatives of private forest owners mainly support this idea. Yet, this adaptation tool does not find a consensus, especially among forest owners and managers from Northeastern France. Based on qualitative research, the article attempts to explain the gap between the viewpoint of local private forest owners and their national representatives. The discourse advocated at the national level would be a virtual construction of reality intentionally built in an external and internal power relationship: between representatives of private owners and other national actors, and among foresters themselves and between competing types of sylviculture. Climate change and plantation are only instruments in that context.