You insisting they are the same doesn’t make it so, an ecologist studying the effects of leaving an area fallow or untouched leads to greater understanding and allows optimisation and application to other areas. Believing the spirits reside in a particular grove does not allow the same and confers no greater understanding because the basis for the practice is incorrect even if the practice itself is sound. But sure, you tell yourself that they do to justify holding onto supernatural explaination despite the fact they have little corelation to reality.