Untouched nature was almost as rare 12,000 years ago as it is now

摘要

AS EARLY as 12,000 years ago, nearly three-quarters of land on Earth was inhabited and shaped by human societies, suggesting that global biodiversity loss in recent years may have been driven primarily by an intensification of land use rather than by the destruction of previously untouched nature. "It's not the process of using land itself [that causes biodiversity loss], it's the way that land is used," says Erle Ellis at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. "You can have traditional land use and still have biodiversity."Ellis and his colleagues analysed the most recent reconstruction of global land use by humans over the past 12,000 years and compared this with contemporary global patterns of biodiversity and conservation. They found that most - 72.5 per cent - of Earth's land has been shaped by human societies since as far back as 10,000 BC, including more than 95 per cent of temperate and 90 per cent of tropical woodlands.