How central planning ruined forests

See ‘In Praise of Floods’ Review: Let the River Run by Timothy Farrington. He reviewed the book In Praise of Floods: The Untamed River and the Life It Brings by James C. Scott. Excerpt:

"In the late 1700s, Scott recounted, German officials set out to rationalize timber production. They replaced the thickety labyrinths of natural forests with uniform rows of single species. Yields went up, and the model spread across the wooded world. Then, a few decades on, the forests began to wither. The fertility of the soil, it turned out, had been sustained by a web of species and processes neglected by the technocrats. As Scott couldn’t resist quipping, the “utilitarian state could not see the real, existing forest for the (commercial) trees.”"