well, yes, Germany used to be all forrests, around 1BCE. Since then, people changed all kinds of habitats, often in a very radical way (burning and razing down

well, yes, Germany used to be all forrests, around 1BCE. Since then, people changed all kinds of habitats, often in a very radical way (burning and razing down the forest, lots of towns ending in -roth because of that). Nowadays, conservation aims mostly for the status quo, not for 1BCE. It might be different in North America, it might not. I'm not really convinced that there should be much of a difference just because it happened over the last few centuries instead of millenia ago. Just preserve some small parts of the previous ecosystem, ignore the rest. The whole planet has been terraformed already anyways, undoing human presence is pointless to try...