People have shaped most of terrestrial nature for at least 12,000 years

The current biodiversity crisis is often depicted as a struggle to preserve untouched habitats. Here, we combine global maps of human populations and land use over the past 12,000 y with current biodiversity data to show that nearly three quarters of terrestrial nature has long been shaped by diverse histories of human habitation and use by Indigenous and traditional peoples. With rare exceptions, current biodiversity losses are caused not by human conversion or degradation of untouched ecosystems, but rather by the appropriation, colonization, and intensification of use in lands inhabited and used by prior societies. Global land use history confirms that empowering the environmental stewardship of Indigenous peoples and local communities will be critical to conserving biodiversity across the planet. Source code to reproduce these analyses and visualizations is available as an R research compendium on the Harvard Dataverse [([77][1]), <https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/6FWPZ9>]. Although the entire analysis can be made from the source code using publicly available data, intermediate data products such as the full Level 12 DGG anthrome classification, maps, and summary statistics are available on the Harvard Dataverse [([78][2]), <https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/E3H3AK>]. [1]: #ref-77 [2]: #ref-78

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