The EU has a grand project to restore substantial parts of some vast forests that existed before modern times.

The project has a crucial prerequisite, not mentioned in the article, without which it will fail: to curb global heating soon. Without this, the ecosystem they are trying to preserve would not be able to survive where it used to exist, and perhaps not anywhere on Earth, not even unmolested. But it will surely be molested, by tropical pests, floods, drought, and/or fire. This project would fail, just as walling out the rising sea will fail.