>From the establishment of the English colony of Jamestown in 1607, there
was uninterrupted and widespread environmental destruction. Within a
few generations, the great forests of the Northeast were leveled, and
not long after the Civil War logging companies started deforesting the
Midwest at such a rapid rate that within 40 years an area the size of
Europe had been stripped, including much of Minnesota, Michigan, and
Wisconsin. For instance, by 1897, sawmills in Michigan had processed
160 billion board feet of white pine leaving less than 6 billion board
feet standing in the entire state. mat
