Trees stand together, they don't struggle against each other. When we take one away, we send waves through an interconnected community. Which is, of course, as oversimplified a picture as is the notion that the forest is nothing but the sum of its trees. There is plenty of competition in a forest. Intertree networks spread disease and poisons as well as nutrients and hormones.
Nature is too complex to ratify our simple worldviews.
Whatever we understand about the interconnections among trees, there is probably much more that we don't understand. If there's any unbiased lesson to be drawn from the community of trees, that's probably it.