This IS true about tree farms, but have you ever looked at say, photos of the Catskill Mountains of NY, or say The Grass Valley area of CA from say 1870 or so?

NO TREES. The ONLY virgin forest in the Catskills (at least according to the book I have) is on the back side of Cornell Mtn. You want to know why? It was all used for tanning/brickmaking, except for that area, because they could NOT economically get there

Walk through the woods in almost all of New England, and you'll know what you'll find? Stone walls. Folks, those walls were NOT built in the middle of the woods, they were in the middle of fields - FARMS, which have all reverted to forest. No, not tree farms, but just farms that were abandoned in the late 1800, early 1900s, and which have, over time, regrown.

When it comes to trees/forest, we are a LOT better off than we were back in that era, simply because we've abandonded a lot of subsistance farms, and let them regrow.

BTW, did you know, there were states on the east coast where the whitetail deer was extinct? Heck, My father could remember a time where a group of 20-30 experienced hunters would go out, all day, every day of the season, and sometimes they would go YEARS without seeing a deer. Today? Most hunters are unhappy if they don't take a deer a year. Much of this was the same problem - no woods, combined with both market hunting (now ileagal almost everywhere) and the fact that families in the depression just didn't care - yeah, they poached deer, better than staving (I know a family friend (hunting buddy) admits his grandfather did it.)