as an owner of some woodland my opinion is this, whilst limited low volume wood harvesting is hard to notice or impact the eco system the continual human use of the wood has many impacts. We make trails, we scuff up the leaf litter, we scare away animals, we make chages for commercial reasons, we selectivly harvest not knowing the consequences.

If we leave it alone and then clear cut and leave again, the area has a long amount of time without disruption to regrow, like a forest fire or something, it seems devestating but the seed bank in the soil will have plenty of opportunity to sort itself out out.

when our neighbour made a clearing, we as aging hippies where shocked and dismayed, over the years his clearing has become a haven for wild life and a genuinely arttractive place for us as well as wildlife, in contrast our patch of overgrown woodland is dark dingy, has little ground cover or fodder for animals and has less biodiversity etc. Now we have a variety of different bits of woodland in out patch so its not an issue but the vibrancy and versitilty of life is amazing and shouldnt be taken for granted.

In many ways our constant low impact "meddling" has done a worse job than actually leaving it to its own devices, clear cutting or not.

Wood land has evolved over millions of years and life is just waiting for the chance to spring up anew and natural events, fires, storms, roaming larger animals etc will naturally clear and kill some of the larger trees that have over shadowed the smaller ones.

The act of driving machinery over the land and even well used foot paths is quite a destructive to the soil and delicate balance of funghi and leaf litter, moss and smaller plants.

So its not that the earth and its plants and animals are not resilient to damage but that we constantly meddle without a long term view. Pretty much every city will be overgrown quite swiftly in earth time if the humasns went away. Its our constant adjusting that can lead to good vs bad outcomes.

Dont get me wrong, i believe that with the right attitude we can be in harmony with nature and makes theings "better" but its just a shame that we dont always do that.