Briefs · Frontier Science
Ecosystems depend on people: don’t abandon them
Leaving nature alone is not saving nature. It is evicting the gardener.
Rural depopulation is a global trend: young people leave, populations age, villages empty and land goes uncultivated. The paradox popping up is that in some places, the absence of humans appears to be associated with declines in biodiversity.
Take Japan’s satoyama landscapes (oak woodlands, grasslands, rice paddies and irrigation ponds): a mosaic of habitats, many species evolved to depend on cycles of human maintenance. Abandon them and the woodlands become dense, shaded and homogenous, the ponds fill with sediment, the grasslands grow over, and the species that rely on those habitats decline — especially endangered ones. It was never untouched!
People shape ecosystems through land management and care, and through religious and spiritual practices too. Nature is not a museum with a “do not touch” sign; it is The Good Life, except the garden is a whole landscape and nobody is left to do the weeding. Traditional knowledge and practices need to be recognised and more firmly grounded in science and policy, so that the people who live in and care for rural landscapes are recognised as stewards, not intruders (sorry, dandelions).
Conclusion: ecosystems do not need fewer people. They need people who stay.
Read the original at Nature News
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