I do know I travel by car most of the south over the course of a year and see thousands of miles of , millions and milions of acres of, billions and billions of TREES. There is no shortage, in any shape or form. Hiways, interstates, back roads. TREES, TREES, TREES. One shorter trip up to Bray's Northwest showed the same. Incidentally, RG, as you know, one place you don't see many are in your southern tip of Florida, but from central Florida north..trees, forests everywhere.
A little known fact about forests and the Eastern USA, with some facts the econazi’s don’t want you to know...
There are now more wooded lands in the Eastern USA then ever—even since the initial start of the English colonies.
MORE than ever.
Why?
#1. The Native Americans (used to be called Indians) burned down vast acreages every year to promote their hunting! Yes, the initial explorers found vast regions of savannah-like prairies over much of the East. Deer, buffalo and elk feed on grass or new growth on buses and young trees. Old growth forests are like the Fangorn Forest. Big trees and little else mammal wise. Actually creepy, too.
#2. Initially, as the colonies grew the local farms grew to support them. By 1800, very little forest existed on the East coast. However, in places like New England, the land is poor and rocky and just not really that good to farm. As the American west opened to them, the farmers of the East moved there. Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi all had far better land than the East, excluding the Carolinas and Virginia. Even so, as old lands became crowded, people moved to new lands. So some of the Eastern forest grew back.
#3. Mechanization of Agriculture. Yes, it used to take a single farmer all day, with his horse, mule or oxen, to plow 10 acres. Now with a single large tractor and gang plows, a single farmer can plow hundreds if not thousands. These advances work best on flat, fertile ground. Rocky, hilly land is not best suited. The Western farms easily out-produce the Eastern farms. Agriculture on those Eastern states went away (not entirely, nor never will, but not like it was!) and the land has grown back to forest.