Well, may have been news to her, but from the ecological perspective, it was always known that climax forests are basically carbon neutral, as the rate of decay and transpiration emissions equal the amount of carbon fixed, in a sort of equilibrium.
Young forests fix a lot of carbon. Trouble is, to keep it a carbon gain, much of the carbon must not be burned or allowed to decay from the previous forest.
Putting lumber in buildings keeps it out of the system for a long time helps, and all replacement trees fix carbon in a net gain for getting it out of the atmosphere. The only other way, which was a joke in forest ecology class, would be to cut much of the old growth trees and submerge them into the Marianas trench into an anaerobic environment where it would not decay and make CO2 and methane. the replacement trees would fix more carbon again, up to that amount sequestered by the removed and carbon neutralized trees.
cutting the tropical forests and burning them to make room for crops or grazing is what that article was measuring.
