Human land use wasn’t always at nature’s expense

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Nearly three-quarters of Earth’s land had been transformed by humans by 10,000 BC, but new research shows it largely wasn’t at the expense of the natural world.
A study involving University of Queensland researchers combined global maps of population and land use over the past 12,000 years with current biodiversity data, demonstrating the effective environmental stewardship of Indigenous and traditional peoples.

UQ’s Professor James Watson said the findings challenged the modern assumption that human ‘development’ inevitably led to environmental destruction.

“There’s a paradigm among natural scientists, conservationists and policymakers that human transformation of terrestrial nature is mostly recent and inherently destructive,” Professor Watson said.

“But lands now characterised as ‘natural’, ‘intact’, and ‘wild’ generally exhibit long histories of human use.

“Even 12,000 years ago, most of Earth’s land had been shaped by humans, including more than 95 per cent of temperate lands and 90 per cent of tropical woodlands.