That's not ideal, but I'm guessing that 480 years is enough time for humans to adapt. Anyway, there have been several articles on here saying that global plant growth and the number of trees have increased over the past century based on NASA's satellite imagery and counts from 50,000 locations. So while your area may be losing trees, other areas are gaining them. Nature adapts and changes.
When the dinosaurs were obliterated by the Chicxulub impactor 65 million years ago, 90% of land species also disappeared, never to reappear again. It took millions of years for mammals to emerge as the "victors" of that huge extinction event.
The viewpoint you espouse is just so hollow and frankly, repugnant. The thought that we can just stupidly smash incredibly intricate towers of evolution's genius, flub our precious time on this Earth to move from ignorantly and unintentionally knocking them over to actively raising a sledge hammer to them, justifying it to ourselves that "it will all be fine". Such a destructive attitude ruins everything for everyone. It's flippant and stupid, But it's ultimately, tragically, self-destructive.
It doesn't matter what we think. It's our actions.
Sorry if it didn’t come through in my comment: I was just being a little sarcastic and building off the GP comment, trying to reiterate that “life finds a way” is pointless to try and argue, since human life is much more fragile than life in general (and I tend to value human life).