By the mid-1800s, much of New England had been stripped of the forests that had once blanketed the region. Centuries of logging, expanding farms and growing settlements transformed vast woodlands into open fields and pasture. Yet over the next two centuries, an extraordinary environmental turnaround unfolded. As farms were abandoned, people migrated west and nature gradually reclaimed the land, allowing forests to regenerate on their own. Today, around 60% of New England is once again forested, a remarkable recovery that scientists describe as one of the world's greatest examples of a "forest transition", where landscapes recover naturally after widespread human disturbance.
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