It is said Larixum, the barren land of snow and whoever the government of Berezya exiled there was not always like this. Studies show that about a quarter of a billion years ago it was on fire. Well more accurately, it was flooded with cascades of lava so vast it was as if the Earth itself was bleeding out. It was a time of dying the likes of which the planet has never seen since. Though the birds often speak of the time when their cousins were slain by a rock from above, that even pales in comparison to the extinction long before the lineage formed. Although, it would be wrong to neglect to mention the fact that the creatures that birds are the only surviving descendants of dominated the era after this worst known extinction event. It would also be wrong to not bring up the much lesser flood basalts dating back to the time of the impact that is attributed to the extinction that spared the ancestors of the birds and the mammals.
The evidence suggests that all the world's forests were destroyed during the time the present-day land of the larch was buried in molten stone. Life in the oceans likely suffocated. Many creatures that made calcified shells found the chemistry of the seas altered to the point they could no longer do so. Theories also suggest a bed of Carboniferous Period coal was ignited by the massive floods of molten rock. Yet for some reason, I imagine a similar cataclysm should the people of this Earth disregard the forests or engage in war with our most terrifying kind of weaponry.