Just last weekend I sat through a presentation by an Indian re-enactor who knows his Indian history. the whiteman was not the only ones who worked the land. He told about how the Indians burned off the forests in order to make grasslands verdant from the ash. The grasslands attrected the Buffalo and large game. They left the forest, but kept them thinned so that the small game could flourish. There are more trees in the Ohio Valley now than there were back then. The redman made the OV one of the richest pieces of land in the world, because they “tended” it as God told us to do.
We'd often run across massive clear-cuts, dozens of acres. And you'd see the natural renewal of the forest.
All kinds of saplings springing up out of the ground, lush green....and you'd see that the buds had all been eaten off the saplings because the deer were feasting on them, as far as you could see.
Old forest, with all the trees high, provide little food for deer.
I took a valuable lesson from that: renewal is good, if it's done right.