[erikpukinskis]

It's called ecological succession[1], and yes there's no way around it. You can slow it, or you can follow the gradient to stay in the kind of environment you like, but you can't stop it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ecological_succession

[telchar]

But you can reset it periodically with an all-consuming wildfire. I'm not sure how that fits into the analogy though...