You obviously have not flown over the eastern half of the country in a
while. Initial reports were that a squirrel could travel from St.
Louis to Boston without touching the ground, and I personally don't
find that hard to believe. Approximately 80% of the initial forest
has been removed, and only minor amounts have grown back to anything
near what was here. If there are more trees, it's because they are
twigs, not forest trees.
The original Easter Deciduous Forest was more or less undamaged by
fire -- trees averaged 90 foot to the canopy and it was closed in most
places, so a fire in the duff didn't bother the trees much if at all.
No sun on the ground in the summer, very little underbrush, just a
vast cathedral of enormous trees 15 ft in diameter and up.
There are certainly more DEER now, since they live in forest edges,
not deep forest. Deer are scarce in deep forest, there isn't anything
for them to eat.
We have the amazing Wesselman's Woods Nature Preserve here in
Evansville, approximately 100 acres of virgin Southern Indiana
bottomland forest. If you are ever here, stop by and see it, it's
astonishing. Nothing like it anywhere else in the Eastern US,
anything similar was logged out long, long ago.
Peter
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