People Have Shaped Nature for Thousands of Years
Posted on May 4th, 2021
The idea of “natural” or “wild” lands is a myth. Scientists released a study showing that about three quarters of terrestrial nature has been shaped over 12,000 years by the land use of Indigenous and traditional peoples. Those land use practices included burning, hunting, species propagation, domestication and cultivation.
The cause of the current biodiversity crisis is a result of intensifying and new uses of the biodiverse landscapes shaped and sustained by traditional societies. “[This study] shows that high biodiversity is compatible with, and in some cases a result of, people living in these landscapes,” says Yadvinder Malhi at the University of Oxford. “Working with local and traditional communities, and learning from them, is essential if we are to try to protect biodiversity.”
Just like us, coral reefs have microbiomes that keep them healthy. Researchers, like our 
Sea Star Wasting Disease (SSWD) has decimated sea star populations around the world. Since the epidemic of dead, dissolving sea stars was discovered around 2013, scientists have been trying to figure out the cause of the disease.
The Great Barrier Reef in Australia has lost half of its coral in the last 25 years. Along its entire length (1,429 miles over an area of approximately 133,000 square miles) coral bleaching has destroyed the reef. When the ocean water near a reef gets too warm, the corals’ symbiotic algae begin producing toxins, and the corals expel them, turning white – this is 
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“If insects were to vanish, the environment would collapse into chaos.”