> > Yes, we still have a lot of trees. But more than two or three centruries ago? I don't think so. It was once said that a squirrel could go tree to tree from the east coast to the Mississippi without putting his foot on the ground.
>
> Said by whom, when?
I couldn't find it but memory says Benjamin Franklin.

I'm not convinced this is true. The Indians, contrary to what one might think, cut down a great many trees themselves. (Depending on the tribe, of course; there were hundreds of tribes, and their cultures were varied and divergent from each other. Some worshipped trees and nature, but not all.)

There were probably not enough Indians in North America to do any real damage to such a vast forest. They didn't have the tools and fire was too difficult to control.

>
> Today, trees are cut down, and trees are grown. In the United States, I believe forests are growing back at least as fast as we're harvesting the wood in them. It's not like there's actually a whole huge amount of indiscriminate tree cutting going on without trees being planted and grown to replace them. A lot of the wood that's harvested here is selective cutting anyway, not clear cutting,

True, but clear-cutting still goes on from Alaska to Florida. I've saw it big time in British Columbia and Washington.

which is a good thing, as instead of all the trees in a young forest suffering in their fight for sunlight, some are harvested for wood and those remaining are freed from constriction and enabled to grow stronger and become healthier.

The lumber industry is pretty good about reseeding these days. That was not the case 50 years ago. However, the worst offenders are developers who bulldoze and burn forests near growing cities. Subdivisions and shopping centers are spreading out from Atlanta like a mushroom cloud. It's also true of many other cities that I visit on a regular basis. Nashville, Knoxville, and Murfreesboro in Tennessee are good examples. I saw two aerial photos of Murfreesboro made in 1955 and 1995. It was unbelieveable how much forest was gone, not to mention farmland that was covered with houses. The population of that relatively small city went from about 12,000 to almost 45,000 in that period.

My original point was that we mean-mouth South Americans for doing the same thing we do ourselves. It's the pot calling the kettle "black."
Howard