Our trees in Europe can be very old if we let them, but the ground is different because it is young. The glaciers of the ice ages have given us great soil which still contains a lot of nutrients (and which is also still replenished from degrading minerals), while the big tropical forests are mainly located on depleted soil, so the nutrients are in the plant matter and easily lost if you remove it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loess

(On that topic, this is also interesting:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terra_preta)