Comment by pphysch
7 days ago
The density and inaccessibility (to large birds and mammals) is critical for sensitive species like butterflies. I'd wager we'd see a resurgence in some declining insect populations if there were more dense pockets of forest.
This is a point made well in the film Wilding - https://www.wildingmovie.com/ - about a rewilding project in the UK. You need change and open ground for any biodiversity benefits. It's a bit like the close-planted commercial forestry fir plantations that are entirely silent and dead aside from the trees themselves.
Commercial forests have a lot of trunks but aren't particularly dense, and probably have terrible biodiversity by design. When I say dense, I mean a human needs to be constantly swinging a machete and scrambling to get anywhere.
Such forests are very rare in USA because even the vast "wilderness" is man-made for ranching, hunting, hiking, sightseeing.