solarpunk memes

A large percentage of those forests are monocultures grown for the paper, pulp, timber and cellulose industry. According to Global Forest Watch, in 2020 9% of land cover on Germany was natural forests but 15% was non-natural. It's basically not very different from planting a field of corn.

Sadly a bunch of trees does not a forest make, especially if they're not native. Most of the local wildlife will not be able to benefit from those trees for food, and there needs to be diversity in types of plants beyond just trees.

Forests are not necessarily the most diverse and natural ecosystem in certain regions. When you go back time with a similar climate to today and no humans, you would have had straight tusk elephants, some of the largest the world has ever seen in what is today Germany. Add to that Irish elk, which 4.5m from bottom to the top of the antlers tall and European forms of lions, leopards and rhinos.

These species would have kept Germany a much more open landscape, with some forested areas, but still open grassland. That is why a lot of native species require open grassland to survive. For example the bustard does not live in forests, but so do many insects. They often survived thanks to pastures keeping land somewhat open.

That is also true for many other parts of the world. Although Europe is hit worse then other places, you used to have elephant species basically everywhere, were humans live today for example.

Forest is not the same as tree plantations.