[MUDDOG]

US forest acreage hit its low in 1920 (750 million acres in 1920, out of 1045 million (not incl. Alaska & Hawaii) when Europeans arrived).

Since then we’ve been replacing forest (currently at a rate of about 3 million acres a year).

One reason is that we don’t need farmland to grow food for the horses who were the main transpostation power before cars.

In 1910, 25 to 30% of all the farmland in US was used to grow food for the horses.

Oil/gas has a FAR smaller footprint than growing food for horses — 83 million acres for horse food in 1910, compared to 16 million acres for all energy production and conversion now.

But we’d be going backwards with solar and wind, which have a big footprint.

[Mastador1]

In 1859 however, the Comstock Lode was discovered in Virginia City, Nevada. During the 1860s Tahoe became the center of a lively commerce involving the silver mines in Virginia City and the Central Pacific Railroad (which was pushing over the Sierra toward the town of Truckee). The Comstock era resulted in large-scale deforestation of the Tahoe Basin, as timber was required to build mine shafts and support growing developments. It is estimated that over 80 percent of the Basin's forests were clear cut during this time.

It doesn't take all that long really to re forest, Tahoe today aside from the damage done by beetle is a thriving full forest.