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You realize nature populated the forests in the first place. Birds carry seeds. It is not impossible.

• bluGill 3y ago
  Over millions of years. If the soil the trees need has washed away they won't grow anytime soon. Some places you can plant a native tree and it will grow. Other places something is lost and it won't grow anymore. Places can be very tiny areas in the case of a desert.
  • hosh 3y ago
    And there are ways to remediate wastelands! It would take a very long time though if we just "left it alone". I think there's a false dichotomy about what "human intervention" means, because as a civilization, we think of human intervention as forces that act upon the ecosystem from the outside. Not all cultures and civilizations sees it that way. I think we think that way in modern times because we see ourselves as apart from the ecosystem rather than a part of the ecosystem. It's pretty common to hear people say, "there's nothing there", even if it is a lush, wildland (or close enough to it). As an example, there are ancient, abandoned perennial food forests that were created by the inhabitants. These work with natural processes so that yields useful to humans are byproducts of the healthy ecosystem, and they can carry on even when humans stop tending them.