ABSTRACT
Since the advent of agriculture, the forests of the world have been cleared to make way for pasture and cultivated fields. When the Romans arrived in Britain nearly two thousand years ago, much of the land was covered with broad-leafed forests. Today, the island has been stripped of most of its woodlands, and the land is used to graze animals, grow crops and house people. The pastoral scenery of the countryside, a land for relaxation through walking or riding, is the outcome of wholescale conversion of forests. The same story of deforestation can be seen throughout the world, whether it be the hills denuded in biblical times in the Middle East or the farmland cleared only a few generations ago in the mid-west and Atlantic seaboard of the United States. In a few areas in the middle latitudes, most notably the eastern United States, a period of intense clearing of woods has been followed by the abandonment of agriculture and recovery of forests. But on the whole, within the last thousand years there has been a substantial new loss of forest land.
