Let's start from a point.
The actual worldwide economic system doesn't work at all, and it's nowhere compatible with environment.
After this, there are some good practices, which can reduce economic exploitment (like manufacturing violin fingerboards directly in africa, if the wages are appropriate) and lower the earth consumption.
Of course cutting less trees IS stil exploitment, but if this big reduction is sustainable, this is a good point.
Consider that natural resources, besides the fossil ones, usually are renewable, and wood is. Of course the exploitment must be compensated with replanting, as you suggested, or reduced to the natural growth rate of nature itself.
I mean, if we reduce the pressure over nature to a sustainable one, maybe the we have solved the problem faster, in a cheap way and with no waste. The problem will be then, fighting the illegality.
About the strength of nature, I seen a very nice documentary on what's going on in Chernobyl now. The nature has prevailed and now there's a lot of life there.
This is a link to the article: http://www.cell.com/current-biolog…9822(15)00988-4
