In the US, in New England, this basically is a side effect of (a) no one wanting wool anymore and (b) Manifest Destiny making the West available for grazing cattle.
New England was something like 80% cleared at some point, largely to graze sheep for their wool. Besides the fact that the wool market these days has mostly been reduced to hats and scarves, the abundant grazing lands in the West (and the slightly-too-short grazing season in New England) largely prevented the re-purposing of the pastures for other livestock. So nowadays, the land is 75% re-forested.
The way I heard it, soldiers returning to New England from the civil war told stories of actual topsoil, and many farmers packed up and left for greener pastures... literally!
Yeah, the soil up here gets marked as "of local agricultural significance", which means it is technically worthless in the grand scheme of things but people still plant orchards, vineyards and pastures on it.
New England was something like 80% cleared at some point, largely to graze sheep for their wool. Besides the fact that the wool market these days has mostly been reduced to hats and scarves, the abundant grazing lands in the West (and the slightly-too-short grazing season in New England) largely prevented the re-purposing of the pastures for other livestock. So nowadays, the land is 75% re-forested.