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Comment by vintagedave | Hacker News Reader

Hello everyone -- what a lovely surprise to see this posted! This is my article. Happy to answer questions :)

Also, this article was first posted on Estonian World [1]. They're a great news site that acts as English-language news for the country of Estonia, run by a couple of journalists who used to work at some big news companies.

I'm grateful to them for publishing my piece [2] and also allowing it to be republished on my own site.

[1] https://estonianworld.com/

[2] https://estonianworld.com/life/the-war-on-estonian-forests/

does the article cover what is happening to the land afterwards? Is it felled for more farming, will it be replanted, will there be building and development?

I find it quite an important aspect of the issue of land use the article covers but little detail is given.

Indeed, not many facts in that article. For example it claims that "Estonia is unique in the amount of land still covered in trees" (50%), and yet that is only 5th highest in Europe [1]. Finland has a tree coverage of 73% [2]. A hundred years ago Estonia had a tree coverage of only 30%, so forests have expanded a lot in Estonia since then [1].

Sure it looks ugly when a forest is cut down, but some types of plants are waiting for just that chance to sprout (adapted for forest fires), and in western countries forests normally grow up again after being cut down.

[1] https://www.eramets.ee/forests-in-estonia/

[2] https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/7750867ad5cf467998492fc...

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