> "The greatest gains have been seen on the East Coast (with average volumes of wood per acre almost doubling since the '50s) which was the area most heavily lo

> "The greatest gains have been seen on the East Coast (with average volumes of wood per acre almost doubling since the '50s) which was the area most heavily logged by European settlers beginning in the 1600s, soon after their arrival." I believe another reason is that the introduction of the railway shifted food production to the plains and California. New England used to be farmland for much of the US. See http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/08/31/new-england-sees-return-forests-and-wildlife/lJRxacvGcHeQDmtZt09WvN/story.html http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/08/31/new-england-sees... : > Today, 80 percent of New England is covered by forest or thick woods. That is a far cry from the mere 30 to 40 percent that remained forested in most parts of the region in the mid-1800s, after early waves of settlers got done with their vast logging, farming, and leveling operations. > Some of the revival can be credited to aggressive environmental efforts ... But the return of forests has mostly been a matter of economics: As New England became more citified and industrial, and food from western states became cheaper, there was less reason to maintain open land — much less blast every wild critter that might nibble a crop or gobble a goose.