[minerjoe]

Zepp Holzer is the master of this dichotomy.

The thought is that Humans have already used (abused?) machinery such as bulldozers and chainsaws to drastically reduce the water holding capacity of the landscape, and our task is to use these machines in one big push to drastically improve the water holding capacity of the land permanently and then to not need to use them any longer.

See any of Zepp's large scale projects. He has been successful, and failed a few times, in projects all over the world with some amazing transformations.