This is pretty well known in the UK. See, for example, the "Rothamsted Broadbalk and Geescroft Wilderness Experiment" [1] which was started in 1880. I suspect

This is pretty well known in the UK. See, for example, the "Rothamsted Broadbalk and Geescroft Wilderness Experiment" [1] which was started in 1880. I suspect that the critical difference here is that the landscape was blighted by a century or more of open cast mining and heavy industry [1] http://www.era.rothamsted.ac.uk/Wilderness http://www.era.rothamsted.ac.uk/Wilderness