A major study led by Aarhus University in Denmark suggests that for more than 20 million years, much of Europe was not covered by dense, dark forest. Instead it was a changing mix of scattered trees, open woodland, grassy clearings and wildflower meadows, kept open by large grazing animals.
Birds and butterflies thrived in these sunlit landscapes. The dense forests common in parts of Europe today appear to be a fairly recent development, the researchers say, rather than the continent's original natural state.
The findings, published in Biological Conservation, challenge the long-held idea that closed forest is what nature looked like before people cleared the land. Senior author Professor Jens-Christian Svenning said reforestation that only plants dense forest, as Danish subsidies require, works against the habitats Europe's species evolved in.
