Ok, I'm gonna try to be nice about this, but "tree farms" are not neutral entities exempt from criticism and they certainly don't exist so that "actual forests get left alone." Maybe in some parts of the world that's true, but I'm actually looking into this (and already did to a certain extent for my Master's thesis) and it's so incredibly, incredibly insidiously incorrect. It's like saying 'this palm oil plantation is a good thing actually because look, they're also trees!' or 'this 1000-acre plot where we exclusively grow corn is fine because corn is a plant!'
Let's start with the basic principle of an ecological system: diversity = resilience = a healthy system. This is as true in a desert or Boreal forest as it is in a tropical rainforest or coral reef. Plantations, by definition, are devoid of diversity. They are monocultures - in the case of tree plantations, sometimes duo- or tricultures - and that's where the diversity ends. The basic reason why a palm oil plantation or a corn monoculture is bad is because they convert healthy, diverse (social-)ecological systems into ecological dead zones. Tree plantations - even the ones with two or three tree species - do this too. Animals don't live in these plantations. A few, maybe - the tough ones. Same goes for the fungi that have symbiotic relationships with species not selected for the plantation. Same goes for soil microbes that need a rich diversity of plant and animal matter to thrive.
I'm going to tell you an anecdote, because this is what really drove the point home for me.
In February of 2021, I was riding in a truck with a Sámi reindeer herder and activist. It was around 8 AM on my second day of fieldwork for my Master's degree (in sustainability), and we were heading up the hill to go feed the reindeer. At that time of year, the roads are paved with ice and all of the trees bowed under the weight of a good meter of snow. As we made our way up the logging access road (the only roads in the region are owned and maintained by the state logging company), I asked him a question. I don't remember specifically what the question was, but I used the word "forest."
"I'm gonna stop you there," he said. "These aren't forests. This is just... trees. There's nothing here that makes it a forest. Nothing for the reindeer."
I asked if he could elaborate. Bear in mind - we're out west of fucking nowhere south of the Arctic Circle. The closest grocery store was an hour and a half drive away, the closest train station twice that. It's the sort of place you can easily romanticize - a kind of reindeer wonderland, where humans and nature still share a bond.
So he elaborated. He told me about the logging industry in Sweden - how all of the trees are Scots pine (a very profitable timber tree) interspersed with a species of spruce. That's more or less it. In the entire country. How in the early 20th century, colonists started planting lodgepole pine - a fast-growing North American variety unsuited to the climate but very profitable for the pulp and paper industry - and planted so densely that it's deadly to anything with antlers and much-loved by predators for that same reason.
And he told me how in Sweden, there is no old-growth or primary forest left - or so little that it's barely worth mentioning. How it's all artificial - replanted since the 1920s or so strictly managed that nothing but Scots pine, spruce, and the occasional birch is allowed to grow, because anything else would cut into profit margins. How the trees are not allowed to mature, because they're cut down as soon as they reach 70-80 years old (when they could live for centuries if left alone). How the reindeer suffer, because young woodland can't produce the lichen reindeer need to survive the winter - so the reindeer herders (all of whom are Indigenous Sámi) spend hundreds of thousands of SEK each year (equivalent to tens of thousands of Euros) on grain to keep them alive. How entire ecosystems - from mycelial networks and soil microbes all the way to moose and bears - have been degraded and hollowed out by the inability of diversity to take hold. How the relationship between the Sámi and their whole social-ecological community suffers as a result.
This is the whole of Sweden, as much as the logging industry likes to paint itself as "green." These ecological dead zones aren't separate from "actual forest" - they are what the country has instead.
And that's just Sweden. While details are different - exact proportions of planted and primary forest, forestry methods, etc. - the story is the same in most of Europe. France and Germany are some of the worst culprits, but Switzerland doesn't get a pass. Go into any woodland in Europe and marvel at the unnatural stillness - the lack of biodiversity that comes from cutting down all the trees every human lifetime or so. And consider that the reason why these woodlands have the ecological integrity of a haphazardly maintained lawn is because they are all maintained like a lawn.
So next time you want to fantasize about how tree planting is some sort of morally neutral endeavor meant to protect "real" forest and that ecological integrity isn't necessary in these plantations, consider what would happen if this was the only type of forest that existed. And sit with that knot in your stomach when you remember that in some places, that's the apocalyptic reality.
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