“ …While many smaller animals such as squirrels, raccoons and opossums never left, Dr. Foster says that large animals and birds are now making big comebacks: bear, moose, coyotes, beavers, turkeys, eagles, osprey and the ubiquitous deer. One reason is that the comeback of the forest has afforded them habitat and protection. At the same time, people who live in sprawling leafy suburbs offer them safety and lots of food. It is a wildlife-damage-control professional’s dream come true. Mr. LaFountain specializes in beavers, which abound in the Bay State. Their population has tripled since 1996 to 70,000 and counting, say wildlife officials — more beavers than when Paul Revere made his midnight ride in 1775. When they flood driveways, inundate septic systems, threaten to contaminate wells or gnaw down prized trees, Mr. LaFountain’s phone rings…. ….The great Eastern forest has been coming back since the middle of the 19th century. It’s not all back and it’s not the same forest. But about 70% of the land that was forested in 1600 is forest again today, says Douglas W. MacCleery, a senior policy analyst with the U.S. Forest Service. That’s about 737 million acres — nearly two-thirds of it in the eastern third of the nation. While some replanting was done, especially in the South, most of the Eastern forest grew back naturally. Some states in the Northeast have been regaining their forest since the Erie Canal opened up the Midwest and farmers moved to better cropland there. Left untended, abandoned farmland reverts to forests in a matter of decades. Massachusetts and Connecticut — once a virtually unbroken sea of trees — had lost 70% of their forests by the Civil War. Today, nearly two-thirds of their land is covered with trees. Similarly deforested, Vermont is now 80% woods, New Hampshire 90%. New York, only 25% forest in 1880, is 66% forest today.
September 8, 2008