The Aug. 2008 The International Journal of Wilderness has a fine article by George Wuerthner.
Most of the rural East has become reforested as agricultural has shifted and these relatively marginal lands for cultivation have grown back into forests.
It may appear the old forest has now been considerably restored, but Wuerthner argues we hardly even know what the orginal forest was like. The new forest is something quite different, and “mere sticks and ghosts compared to past glory.”