this post was submitted on 17 May 2026
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I've seen forest sprout up in abandoned dead areas without any human assistance. It takes about 2 decades of being left alone to get enough young growth to start being called a forest, but not really more than that. And it would take generations more to be called an old "real" forest, but it has to start somewhere. To rehabilitate long dead soil it might take what you describe, but turning an old meadow into a wild area that will eventually turn into a forest, does not need human intervention. It just requires to be left alone. In my climate that is. Claiming that forests can't grow without human assistance is absolute nonsense, forests grew just fine before humans came along.
And as further proof that I don't live in fantasialand with my belief that forests can grow without human intervention, here's 2 links with examples: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_rewilding https://www.rewildingmag.com/passive-rewilding-natural-reforestation/
A bunch of twigs does not a forest make.
In a pre-industrial Europe, sure, forests are everywhere and foresting alone like crazy. But we're in a post-industrial one. Most land in Europe is altered in some ways, was farmed on at some point, or had something else going on. Everything is littered with plants that we selectively bred or mutated, a wild very aggressive weed are everywhere and will be everywhere. Soil composition is wild and weird. The air ~~is unfit to breathe the food is unfit to eat I am mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore~~, you get the point.
It's not that it can't grow without human assistance, the human assistance is needed to keep it from human interference, because we changed the land and continue doing so.
But obviously, sometimes a forest just grows, when it wants to. But you can't guarantee this process, that was my point.
To give another example:
...
Instead, the trees at Knepp Castle Estate in southern England were allowed to spread naturally. Birds such as jays can disperse as many as 7,500 acorns in four weeks. "Not a single tree was planted, no saplings were bought from commercial nurseries, no tanalised wooden stakes, no polypropylene tubes and plastic ties, no direct financial or carbon costs – no effort," says Isabella Tree, co-owner of Knepp Castle Estate.
...
Chazdon, who has studied natural regeneration for more than 30 years, questions the commonly held assumption that trees need to be actively planted to tackle climate change and biodiversity loss. "There's a perspective that humans did this damage and it's our job to fix it, and that we should govern the process, and just let nature help when it can," she says. "Another view is that forest restoration is fundamentally natural, and that humans can assist it, but ultimately it should be governed by natural processes.".
...
Proponents are arguing for natural regeneration to be taken more seriously in national and international efforts to mitigate the climate and biodiversity crises. Recent research has shown that natural regeneration can potentially absorb 40 times more carbon than plantations, and provide a home for more species. It is also significantly cheaper than tree planting, with different studies in Brazil showing costs reduced by 38%, or even up to 76%.
...
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210524-the-reason-wild-forests-beat-plantations