From To Preserve Forests, Supporters Suggest Cutting Some Trees:
Many residents of the Northeast don’t know they live in one of the greatest natural reforestation success stories in modern times. Not since the collapse of Mayan civilization in Central America more than a thousand years ago has such a vast landscape reforested itself, says David R. Foster, director of the Harvard Forest unit near Petersham, Mass., and lead author of its new report.Because fights over logging have occurred in the West, Americans tend to think that’s where the trees are. In fact, originally, an estimated 75% of the forests in what became the U.S. were in the eastern one-third of the country, says the U.S. Forest Service. European settlers cut or burned trees to clear land for pasture and crops. But in the 19th century, as richer, flatter, less-rocky land in the Midwest opened up, farms in the East were abandoned. Over the past 150 years, much of that forest grew back. In some states, such as New York, it’s still growing, at a rate of thousands of acres a year.
In the 12 states of the Northeast, an estimated 72% of the land that was forested in 1630 was reforested by 1997, according to the forest service.
In Massachusetts, the nation’s third-most-densely populated state, about 60% of the land is covered with forest today.