Posted by rdmuser 4 hours ago
Some areas are so destroyed by human activities that they need some help in rewilding, which is definitely possible. Of course, this study does point out that some management of the land that resembles previous human activities could help biodiversity. And of course, as the study mentions, they did not include "Mosses, lichens, mammals and invertebrates—including soil organisms such as nematodes and molluscs".
Keep in mind also that biodiversity is difficult to measure can be counterintuitive. Farmland and managed land creates edge habitats, or a confluence of habitats, where measured biodiversity is higher. Of course, when that edge habitat disappears the measurements can go down. But that does not imply that merging a huge number of farmland back ot a more contiguous wild are won't support biodiversity better in the long run.
People may have generally existed in these regions, but the scope of ecological impact & evolutionary pressure is more recent.
It's actually more of a recent phenomenon that a lot these small villages and towns now becoming basically vacant in Japan.
People have been in Japan for many thousands of years at this point.
Which is half true, half not.
If you re-introduce certain keystone species, the rest follows automatically - the most well-known and well-studied example being the wolf in Yellowstone [1].
[1] https://www.yellowstonepark.com/things-to-do/wildlife/wolf-r...
While there definitely was some groups of people/tribes who farmed the land historically. In the US definitely was a smaller amount compared to Japan during that stretch of time before even the USA was around.
There's a lot of bits of biodiversity you don't get without humans putting their thumb on the scale and forcing a different equilibrium.
Climate change is happening everywhere but it is quite noticeable in Japan with summers getting hotter and winters getting milder.
Raleigh used to have more snowy winters from what I was told. Now a days winters have a 1 in 4 chance of giving snow you might see in the morning for most of the area.
Likewise, I don't know if Japan has to deal with wildly aggressive invasive species like I am right now with buckthorn, but there's lots of plants that will simply choke out most others and aren't very beneficial. If nobody's around anymore and they were actively grooming the pastures and such, that will also put a ton of pressure on previously flourishing species.
I didn't see it in the article nor the 2025 study https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-025-01578-w
Additionally, the article points to Spain and Lake Constance in the Alps exhibiting similar effects.
https://www.nippon.com/en/articles/-/14855
I will look up spain when I get time and get back to you. I have to be somewhere now.