I have a book on industrial archaeology that mentions wood-fired blast furnaces of New Jersey and such areas. They would build a furnace with a ramp to the top allowing material to be dumped in at the top. Then this ironworks would run for a decade or two until it had consumed all available wood in a radius of ten to twenty miles. Tear down, move on, and repeat. Coal (and the railroads to transport it) made a big difference in metalworking.
Well, 15
Well, 15,000 years ago, New England (at least as far south as Long Island and Cape Cod) was neither a steppe nor forest; in fact the only growing things were algae in the cracks of the glaciers. I’m not sure there was really enough time between glaciers disappearing and humans arriving to say there was any real stable biome. (In fact, I’ve seen some evidence that hemlocks, being slow-growing and not great at dispersing seeds, today still haven’t recovered their full range in Canada after being pushed south by the Ice Age).
I am perfectly ready to believe that many more than two countries have had forest growth throughout the 20th century. Israel may be remarkable in that much of it was desert for several centuries, and not simply recently cleared to be farmland, and the forest growth was the result of a concerted effort, rather than simply letting nature take its course, but even then, Israel may not be unique.
However, pointing out that several of the smallest states within the US is not relevant to whether the US as a whole gained, lost, or simply maintained (by percentage) forest land. It’s all well and good that New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Vermont gain lots of forest, but if, at the same time, Texas, or Nevada was razed for cattle farming, there will still be a net loss. Granted, most of the razing for cattle happened in the 1800s, not the 1900s,
ETA: I have no idea why, but only about 1/2 of what I wrote posted. No time to recreate whole post before window closes. And have something else pressing. Will clear up confusion later.
Texas apparently has reversed at least some of its losses in forested land from earlier days of settlement, with currently over 62 million acres of forest land (second in the U.S. only to Alaska) and a revived timber industry. There are also four national forests in Texas. So it’s a rather gross exaggeration to suggest that the state was “razed”.
Here are some stats indicating that states with the highest percentages of forested land are mostly in New England, the Mid-Atlantic and southeastern United States.
*since moving to my (literally) old Kentucky home, I’ve had two less-than-thriving trees removed and planted 20, so I’m trying to do my part, even if some of the planting motivation stems from a desire to screen our home from the road and nearest neighbors.
Did you read bibliophage’s posts/cites?
I’ve long read that the US as a whole is getting more and more forested. Not sure of any specific 100 year time period, but HUGE areas were deforested in the 1800s - such as much of Michigan (not a small state - more than 11x the size of Isreal, tho not in a desert.)
Huge swaths of land were clear cut (I’m thinking Shawnee Nat’l Forest in S. Ill.), until proven useless for agriculture, and allowed to revert to forest.
And several folk identified examples in Europe.
Not sure why the JNF couldn’t just take pride in their amazing accomplishments w/o (seemingly) misrepresenting the uniqueness of their accomplishment.
I don’t know that the JNF is spreading this misinformation. It could have originated with American Jews, or even with American gentile supporters of Israel, and not be a product of Israel at all-- or it could be a product of Israel, but not specifically the JNF. I have no idea.
For what it’s worth, what you are talking about is the difference between reforestation and afforestation. If you eliminate all cases of reforestation the answer to the question in your OP is a lot less muddied. Although I still can’t pinpoint what that second country might be, I suspect it is in the same region, perhaps Iran or Turkey.
Ahh - good point. I suspect that is likely what they are claiming. Of course, if you go back sufficient millennia… 
I am glad lots of people seem to be getting something out of this thread. I have not been participating, because my original question, which was, is this essentially a UL, and just some kind of misconstruence of something, or even a deliberately made-up factoid, has been answered. So, I’m not participating in the thread anymore.
I want to thank everyone who provided the information I was after. If the thread is still lively after several weeks, I’m sure I’ll check in, but I’ve basically gotten what I was after.
I don’t want to be accused of “drive-by posting,” though, so I thought I’d post this explanation.
I was under the impression that there are more trees in the U.S. than there used to be (since about the 1930s, I think), but there is less old-growth forest area. The claim is that it’s old-growth forest area that’s more important than the number of trees. Is anything like this correct?
There are some truly massive in area tree farms in the South East so I find that easy to believe.
Old Growth is better habitation but tree farms do help with climate change quite a bit.