快猫短视频

What is nature? We tend to think of it as something 鈥渙ut there鈥�, far away. We watch it on TV, we read about it in glossy magazines. We imagine somewhere distant, wild and free, a place with no people and no roads and no fences and no power lines, untouched by humanity鈥檚 grubby hands, unchanging except for the turn of the seasons. This is our mistake. This dream of pristine wilderness haunts us. It also blinds us.

After many years thinking and writing about nature and wilderness, I have come to see these concepts as not just unscientific, but damaging. The notion of a pristine ecosystem is a myth. Over millennia, humans have stirred up the global pot and changed the entire planet so that all organisms alive today are influenced by us. And it goes the other way, too. We humans are deeply influenced by the plants and animals we evolved with; we are part of 鈥渘ature鈥�.

Changing our ideas about nature isn鈥檛 easy. It is hard for you and me; it is probably hardest for those who have spent their lives studying and protecting wilderness. But it is crucial that we do. 鈥淲ilderness鈥� rhetoric has long been used to justify denying land rights to Indigenous people and to erase their long histories. What鈥檚 more, thinking of nature and humans as incompatible makes it impossible to revive or discover ways of working with and within nature for the common good.

All species that regularly interact shape each other鈥檚 evolution. Natural selection favours organisms that thrive in their environment, and the environment is as much the living species in a place as it is non-living factors like climate. So, like all animals on Earth, our species has been affecting other species for its entire run.

Admittedly, for much of our history, our line hasn鈥檛 had a particularly outsized influence. But by the late Pleistocene, Homo sapiens had become the best hunters on Earth and a wave of extinctions of megafauna 鈥� animals over about 45 kilograms 鈥� followed them as humans migrated around the globe. Climate shifts may have also played a role in some of these extinctions, but it is likely that people were at least partially responsible for many of them. There were probably some , too 鈥� certainly of parasite species, perhaps also species of dung beetle that relied on the not insignificant dung heaps left by some massive creatures. Similarly, scavengers were in trouble, with fewer giant carcasses to feast on. North America , and the California condor only survived by taking advantage of beached whales and other marine mammals.

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Megafauna, like all creatures, influenced other species in their ecosystems, so in their absence their landscapes transformed. In North America, the demise of large grazing animals had an effect not unlike . It meant more plants and, in turn, more fuel for fire. In Australia, areas of the outback that are now nearly treeless were , shrubland and grassland. As giant relatives of kangaroos and wombats and huge flightless birds disappeared, plant matter built up and then burned, starting a cycle of wildfires in some places that favoured the tough, fire-adapted species now common across the arid parts of Australia. The effects of Pleistocene hunters in Africa and Eurasia are more contested, but that doesn鈥檛 mean our influence was less profound.

Many large predators went extinct during this time, but others evolved to thrive in the new normal. Whereas the extinct 鈥渉yper carnivores鈥� usually specialised in just one or a few prey species, today鈥檚 apex predators 鈥� jaguars, mountain lions, wolves, grizzly bears 鈥� are , eat plants, switch prey and make other behavioural choices. That flexibility is no doubt serving them well now as they struggle to hang on in the 21st century.

鈥淟ike all animals, our species has been affecting other species for its entire run鈥�

Human ancestors didn鈥檛 only shape other species by contributing to extinctions. They also evolved mutually beneficial relationships with some species that changed both parties. Centuries or even millennia of Indigenous management left certain . In other cases, people directed the evolution of food species by selective harvesting and by replanting seeds of individuals with desired characteristics. And people moved plants around intentionally: in North America, for example, they brought fan palms to the Sonoran desert for shade and fruit.

Many Indigenous peoples use fire to manage both the land and its animals. Fire can keep down dry fuels, reducing the chance of a destructive, out-of-control fire later in the season. Fires also stimulate new plant growth, which is the most nourishing to many herbivores. So the practice both feeds wild animals and attracts them to be hunted.

Indigenous land management would have influenced the animals that lived in and around these ecosystems. More directly, humans altered the evolutionary trajectory of some wild animals so thoroughly that they ceased to be wild. Indeed, it is possible that the reason there aren鈥檛 more examples of ecological 鈥渕utualisms鈥� between humans and wild animals is that, in such cases, we have become so intertwined that we call our 鈥減artners鈥� something else: domesticates. In this framing, dogs, for example, are just the subset of wolves that have mutualistic relations with humans.

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Today, even the wildest of wild animals aren鈥檛 only influenced by all those millennia of human-caused changes, they are continuing to adapt to our ever-changing ways. Wild animals make their own choices about what to do every day 鈥� in that sense they are free. But their daily choices involve navigating a world that has been rearranged for human needs and desires. And we profoundly influence the evolution of their minds and bodies. . Animals we hunt and fish intensively .

Natural urbanites

As for the 鈥渨ild鈥� animals in our cities and suburbs, they have thoroughly adapted to our world. Those that communicate by sound, including birds, frogs and toads, have . White storks in Spain . Crows in Japan , house sparrows have , triggering the mechanisms to get into lunchrooms and caf茅s. They have even learned to incorporate , since the nicotine repels parasitic mites. Rats, pigeons and other organisms have so fully adapted to humans that they now depend on us.

Climate change is altering the ranges, annual cycles and behaviour of untold numbers of species. Great tits in the UK are , tracking the changing schedules of the caterpillars their nestlings eat. The caterpillars, in turn, track the bloom time of trees. Some caterpillars in the US are even evolving to . Such relationships between new and native species are knitting together novel ecosystems around the world.

鈥�10 per cent
Land area in the Americas being farmed when Christopher Columbus arrived鈥�

鈥�50 per cent
Portion of Earth鈥檚 land actively used by humans for our own ends鈥�

鈥�2 kilometres per year
Rate at which insects on the British mainland are spreading north because of global warming鈥�

鈥�50 per cent
Proportion of plants and animals whose range has shifted due to climate change鈥�

Some animals are moving towards the poles and upwards in elevation as the climate warms. In mainland Great Britain, a study of invertebrates, including bees, butterflies, grasshoppers and spiders, showed them moving north at an average . , expand at the cooler edge, or both.

Not all animals move, though, or move the way you might predict. Researchers are uncovering more ability to adapt in place than they expected, which is encouraging. Animals tend to evolve smaller bodies in hotter temperatures, perhaps because they are less prone to overheating with a larger surface-area-to-volume ratio. 快猫短视频s have caught a population of a South African bird, the mountain wagtail, . The American lobster and Atlantic cod have also .

Climate change is increasing plant growth in some ecosystems, creating more food for animals, but drought is setting up starvation scenarios and triggering catastrophic wildfires in others. More than any other human influence on Earth, climate change is global in scope, affecting all life, all ecosystems.

Few people argue that any level of human influence disqualifies a place from being 鈥渘ature鈥�. Such a purist stance would imply that 鈥渘ature鈥� ended when human-caused climate change began. For many, 鈥渘ature鈥� is a property that comes in degrees: one can speak of places as being more or less natural. But even in this sense, there is no real room in the concept for us to imagine relationships between humans and non-human species that aren鈥檛 destructive, since human influence by definition decreases naturalness.

More troublingly, not all humans are seen as separate from 鈥渘ature鈥�. The way people use the word 鈥渨ilderness鈥� in particular perpetuates the colonialist myth that Indigenous people had no agency and couldn鈥檛 modify, manage or influence the landscapes around them. To this day, professional ecologists measure the 鈥渆cological integrity鈥� of North American landscapes by comparing their current state with the 鈥渘atural range of variability鈥�, which is typically defined as whatever it looked like in the 300 or 400 years just before Europeans showed up.

And yet, Indigenous land management was in many places ; hunting determined populations of prey species; harvest and replanting shifted the ranges and abundances of some plant species; agriculture domesticated others. When Christopher Columbus arrived in the 15th century, a good . However, where colonisers saw this management in action, they often failed to recognise it, because of its different forms and because of their preconceived notions about the native people.

Colonial power play

Dismissing Indigenous land management as minimal, or treating pre-colonisation ecosystem changes as 鈥渘atural,鈥� is sometimes misperceived as a compliment to peoples who were able to husband their resources without depleting them. But the 鈥渧irgin wilderness鈥� narrative has been used around the world to deny Indigenous people rights to their lands. In Australia, British colonists took land that was being actively managed by Aboriginal peoples on the basis that it wasn鈥檛 improved or cultivated, and thus was . 鈥淲ilderness鈥� thus isn鈥檛 just a romantic ideal; it is also a colonial power play.

Around the world, Indigenous people have been evicted from their homes, which were later rebranded as 鈥渨ilderness鈥� and set up as places for white people to use for recreation and relaxation. In , a unit of the California State Militia expelled a band of Ahwahneechee people, killing 23 and setting their houses and acorn stores on fire, to make way for gold miners. In 1864, US president Abraham Lincoln made Yosemite valley into a park 鈥� an act considered by many to be the beginning of the national parks system. Four years later, naturalist John Muir came to California and fell in love with the landscape. He called Yosemite 鈥減ure wildness鈥� and wrote that 鈥渘o mark of man is visible upon it鈥�. What Muir didn鈥檛 realise 鈥� or allow himself to understand 鈥� was that the landscape he loved so ardently was created by the 鈥淚ndians鈥� he sneered at in his writings as unkempt blights on the landscape.

鈥淭he 鈥榳ilderness鈥� rhetoric has long been used to deny land rights to Indigenous people鈥�

Our concepts of nature and wilderness sadly limit the solutions that we can imagine. Perhaps because of the bluntly extractive tendencies of their ancestors, it remains very difficult for many people with primarily European ancestry to wrap their minds around even the idea of a positive, mutually beneficial relationship with other species. Thus they can see only two conceptual options: destruction of nature by humans or separation of humans from nature. To save nature, we must exile ourselves from it 鈥� like latter-day Adams and Eves leaving Eden in shame after despoiling it.

We value 鈥渘aturalness鈥� so highly that in some places we are even willing to hurt and kill animals to protect it. When non-native animals are killed simply because they 鈥渄on鈥檛 belong鈥� and not because they are clearly causing some measurable harm, we have decided that erasing the taint of the human is more important than the lives of animals 鈥� who, lest we forget, have no conception that they are in the 鈥渨rong鈥� place.

To make good environmental decisions, we must stop focusing on trying to remove or undo human influence, on turning back time or freezing the non-human world in amber. We must instead acknowledge the extent to which we have influenced our current world and take some responsibility for its future trajectory. Given that we actively use at least half of Earth鈥檚 land for our own ends and actively manage many of our protected areas, a gardening metaphor seems right. But our global garden is, and , rambunctious because we must always leave room for the autonomy of non-humans. We shouldn鈥檛 seek to carefully control every plant and animal on the planet. We couldn鈥檛 even if we wanted to.

Rejecting the human/nature dichotomy doesn鈥檛 mean condoning all human actions because, as animals, everything we do is 鈥渘atural鈥�. Using 鈥渘atural鈥� as a substitute for 鈥済ood鈥� is the problem here, not the solution. Many human actions have been bad for us, bad for other species, bad all around. As a collective, we humans have clearly taken more than our fair share of space, water and other resources. But we don鈥檛 fix that by exiling ourselves from the rest of Earth鈥檚 species and building a wall between us. We fix that through repairing the systems by which we make our living, by learning 鈥� or re-learning 鈥� better, positive relationships with the species with which we share Earth.