The idea that Nature flourishes best without people is not always supported by the way ecosystems have developed. For generations, Indigenous communities and traditional farmers have shaped landscapes in ways that created habitats for plants, insects, birds and amphibians. Examples include fire-managed ecosystems in Australia and oak savannahs in North America.
The scale of land conversion has grown sharply since industrialization, with intensive land use now a major driver of biodiversity loss. But protected areas were not intended to be entirely free of human activity. Evidence suggests that some landscapes lose valuable habitats when people stop managing them.
In Japan, rural depopulation has led to the abandonment of villages and a decline in traditional rice farming and woodland care. That change is reducing habitats for species that depend on flooded rice fields, field margins and open-canopy forests.
Maintaining biodiversity can require specific, carefully managed work: controlling water levels, providing grazing animals, managing forests and using prescribed burns to reduce the risk of severe wildfires. Other practices include traditional foraging and planting, building coastal clam gardens, and thinning trees and shrubs to encourage new growth. Such efforts should draw on both modern conservation science and long-standing ecological knowledge.
These approaches can be more labour-intensive and costly than industrial agriculture. The article argues that governments should provide direct, substantial funding to support them, building on existing grants and agricultural biodiversity programmes. It also points to the US Civilian Conservation Corps, which employed three million young men from 1933 to 1942 on projects including tree planting, trail building and natural-resource management, as a possible model—with updated standards and evidence-based work.
Public investment in land stewardship could support both ecosystems and workers, particularly as governments consider employment effects associated with technological change. The central point is that protecting nature does not always mean removing people; in some places, responsible human care helps preserve biodiversity.
Sources: Nature.