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Comment by josephjrobison | Hacker News Reader

“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.“

Source: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2013/08/31/new-england-see...

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I guess it's anecdata, but near me within 10 miles of downtown Boston there is a substantial area of forested park land which used to be farms. You can tell it was farm land by the remnants of the stone walls, which themselves only became prominent somewhere around the Revolution when people had cut down so many trees there wasn't enough for building fences entirely from wood. Source: my recollection of reading https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/1581571658

Can only hope Brazil, India and Indonesia will follow in the replanting and reforestation after they're done with their denuding their tropical forests.

People need to learn from what happened in Haiti. They have no trees to protect the soil for farming and from hurricanes. They over fished their coastal waters to the point they are dead now. Neither do they have access to fish for food nor one the biggest economic drivers in the Caribbean, diving reefs, which bring in billions in tourism dollars.

It is so friggen' obvious what happens when we don't project the environment, I can't figure out why people are so naive.

I'm guessing it would never happen but perhaps the most viable move would be for them to merge with the Dominican Republic --not that they are the best government around, but they cannot be worse than Port-au-Prince with regard to governance.

Or they need to learn how to attract investment rather than feel-good NGOs who exacerbate the issue of corruption and dependence on foreign aid.

It's also becoming fricking obvious what happens when we allow environmentalism to make us deeply skeptical towards anything involving the physical manipulation of objects in the real world. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kxw-JDSvKTg

Our economy is stagnating, and as our growth stagnates, politics becomes a zero sum game. Our radical environmentalism is creating a world that no longer accepts change in the world outside of bits.

There is nowhere in the world where "radical environmentalism", whatever that may actually mean, is practised on any scale.

If you're concerned about economic growth you would be better looking at inequality. Of course Peter Thiel is not going to mention that.

"Rampant Environmentalism" is by far the better problem to have. You can tune down from that, what we now have is a road to extinction. Also, its noteworthy that rampant exploitation begats radical environmentalism, just like uncontrolled libertarian capitalism begats marxism. Get rid of the one, and the reason for the other goes away too.

I wonder how much of the biodiversity would return with a reforestation project. I assume that many (most?) species wouldn't survive until the forest is back.

I'm sure I remember reading a study of jungle areas which were cut down by native civilizations more than 1000 years ago and which have regrown since - and even a millenium wasn't enough to restore it to original condition.

I think that as long as species don't become (critically) endangered, many are able to recover. But I think it depends on the species. For some the sustainable minimum is pretty high (for example the passenger pigeon), but for others like wolves, they bounce back pretty quickly even when starting with low numbers. Some fish are the same. A few European forests have bounced back pretty well, after having been cut down over the centuries. Chernobyl is another example of an ecosystem recovering -as well as the mt. St. Helens devastation area.

In some situations some may bounce back but their predators not, creating wild imbalances. As a nearby example, red deer, roe deer and wild boar populations grow uncontrolled and they thoroughly destroy everything that's below 1.5-2m, provoking cascading ecosystem effects that endangers some local forests.

Poachers kill protected predators such as L. Lynx purely out of pride†, and as soon as wolves come anywhere near possibly even remotely like rumoured to be coming around people go up in arms OMG-please-people-think-of-the-children-and-sheep-we-have-to-obliterate-the-thing-out-of-existence.

† Lynx can kill comparatively sizeable prey (up to 5x their weight!), so they typically leave the carcass in place and come back some days later, so all the poachers have to do is spot a carcass in the woods, stay downwind, gun down the poor unsuspecting fella from a distance, and brag about their awsum top-of-the-food-chain I'm-a-super-predator-killing-a-definitely-terrifying-predator†† leet skillz.

†† Seriously, it's a beautiful, easily frightened cat that is a real ninja and scared as hell of humans. Zero threat, and zero pride to be taken in mowing down a sitting duck.

Currently in Europe, regarding the wolves, it's 'protect-the-wolves-don't-care-about-sheep'. But it allow to limit the over-population of certain animals in certain area (mostly the mountains).

I presume you talk about Eastern/Central Europe? That's certainly not the case for Western Europe.

Wolves are legally considered pest in France. Hunting being a regulated activity, the allowed kills have been raised to 40/y this very year. Overall kills are estimated to be well over a hundred.

Are you sure about wolves considered pest in France? I haven't found if that's the case.

Still thank you for your answer, I didn't know about the quotas.

This is a decision that has to be made locally (not state-wide) by députés and it has been taken at various points in time in some areas. Basically when in effect it says that if wolves are threatening livestock, non-hunters are allowed to perform kills. At various point in times there also have been allowance to use wartime-class sniping weapons to hunt at night. Allowed kill ratios have been known to reach 0.75 of the actual wolf population in some areas too. Paranoia is through the roof in France, while you cross the nearby border and Italy seems able to cope with 10 times the wolf population just fine.

Imo, the deforestation in India is not that bad compared to industrial timber logging in developed economies. Most of the deforestation is due to population expansion happened in the last century and now that population growth is getting stabilised, deforestation also would stall I hope.. but it's a difficult task to regrow forests, as the place is genuinely occupied for housing or have been cultivated for centuries..

Note also that at least New Hampshire has far more tree cover now than it ever did before the deforestation. But we have lost ~100% of our old-growth trees.

The new trees will become old growth in good time. Japan was heavily deforested 300 years ago too and much of that has recovered.

Yeah, hopefully. The trouble at the moment is an invasive species which nibbles the tips of all the pine trees, making them grow slowly and generally crappy looking. Also a big conservation area in my hometown sold logging rights. Sure it's "responsible sustainable" logging but it still scared off all the wildlife! I'd never heard that place be dead silent before. It's very depressing.

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