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.

this is well known in uk as pretty much all the forests have been managed for millenia and there are species that need coppiced woodland etc. Also it makes sense that we need to sequester carbon by growing wood and then not burning it or letting it decay but using more wooden furniture and implements.

Owning some woodland in our family it has been counter injtuitive the whole chopping trees thing. The woods have been choked by old and overgrown trees, leeding to far less productivity and less species diversity. The lack of larger animals to create and maintain clearings and clear the ground cover leads to pretty barren areas. We as good curators of the land have to mimic the effects of the larger animals that we removed.

As the plastic and fossil fuels have led to vast changes in how we utilise land, many areas are not very productive anymore. Its not so much that land left to go wild isnt a good thing but that we have been so efficent at removing the larger animals that its not truly a wild enviroment any more. Its a bit of a barren wasteland on the edge on an industrialised zone.

For example the elephants are considered important to maintianing certain habitats in africa and wolves vs deer have proven interesting in maintaining American parks.

the Amazon has evidence that a much larger population existed there and could be considered an overgrown market garden.

The more we look into our impact and interelationship with nature its clear to me that the concept of the "garden" of eden is profound. There ARE ways that human intervention can be beneficial for US AND THE PLANET and all its inhabitants. Its a shame that we are not always good at doing what is best for us even, money has a way of doing things for expediency that is somewhat short sighted. Capitalism will only really work for all if we put a greater cost/benefit on all of life and not just the limited things that are the most efficient to exploit.