https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-02761-3 Skip to main content Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript. Advertisement Advertisement Nature * View all journals * Search * Log in * Explore content * About the journal * Publish with us * Subscribe * Sign up for alerts * RSS feed 1. nature 2. book reviews 3. article Fall of the wild: why pristine wilderness is a human-made myth Download PDF * BOOK REVIEW * 23 August 2024 Fall of the wild: why pristine wilderness is a human-made myth Even 'untouched' natural landscapes bear witness to millennia of human influence, a lyrical book argues -- with implications for how we seek to rewild them. By * Douglas H. Erwin^0 1. Douglas H. Erwin 1. Douglas H. Erwin is a palaeobiologist at the National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC. View author publications You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar * Twitter * Facebook * Email Mongolian Kazak eagle hunter galloping on his horse, with his golden eagle on his right arm, its wings open among the mountains. A hunter with his horse and golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) in Mongolia. Credit: K. Neville/Getty You have full access to this article via your institution. Download PDF Download PDF Nature's Ghosts: The World We Lost and How to Bring it Back Sophie Yeo HarperNorth (2024) A century ago, the world's first 'wilderness area' was established in the Gila Mountains of southern New Mexico, by the forester Aldo Leopold. He wasn't concerned with preserving ancient wildlands or resurrecting a memory of the Pleistocene epoch. He wanted hunters to be able to take a two-week backpacking trip without encountering a road. Out of such pragmatic sentiments -- and decades before the US Congress offered protections -- grew a system of more than 800 wilderness areas on federal lands in the United States. Hundreds more have since sprung up worldwide. The wilderness is widely seen as a place untrammelled by human activities. Not so, argues journalist Sophie Yeo in Nature's Ghosts. Advocating lyrically for rebuilding a diverse natural world, she recognizes that, however wild a region might seem, human activities have left a mark in even the most isolated regions. People have been a part of nature as long as they've been around, coevolving with its ecosystems for millennia. [d41586-024] Rewilding the planet: how seven artificial islands could help a dying Dutch lake Take the English countryside. In A Child's History of England (1852-54), novelist Charles Dickens perpetuates the narrative that the country was once covered in pristine forests and swamps, on which humans had little imprint until they acquired metal tools. Yeo dissects the deep flaws in this vision. Far from eking out an existence on the margins of vast forests, our forebears were reshaping the environment as soon as humans diverged as a species. Spiralling out from her home in England, Yeo explores such transformations by examining fisheries in Finland; restoration of wildwood in the Scottish borders; biodiversity-preservation programmes on small farms in Transylvania, Romania; and farming practices in Denmark and Greenland. In Finland, for example, fishers at lake Puruvesi have reclaimed rights to fish using conventional practices in areas that were usurped by the crown and state in the sixteenth century. By rebranding the vendace (Coregonus vandesius) -- a small whitefish that was typically destined to be pet food -- as a marketable delicacy, the fishers are providing a modern rationale for conserving an ancient landscape and way of life. For half of the year, the fishers drill through the ice and deploy large seine nets to scoop up the vendace from beneath the frozen surface of the lake. Ghosts of environments past Weaving into her narrative an understanding of ecological niches, previous biodiversity crises and the deep environmental legacy of Roman farming, Yeo demonstrates the fallacy of trying to return the environment to any point in the past, whether that be pre-Roman Great Britain or Pleistocene Europe. Most continents -- save for Africa, where large animals live on, and Antarctica, the surface of which has long been buried under kilometres of ice -- are, as Yeo puts it, "haunted by the ghosts of the megafauna" that disappeared in the past 50,000 years, yet left an imprint on soil nutrients or made holes in ecological communities. Brown bison rides through columns of steam at Yellowstone National Park's Grand Prismatic Spring, Wyoming. A bison in Wyoming.Credit: Paolo Picciotto/REDA&CO/UIG/Getty She recounts how certain sharks in the Kiribati archipelago, white-tailed eagles (Haliaeetus albicilla) in Wales and beavers in California were regarded more as myth than reality, until careful work confirmed that those species once thrived in these regions. Those that remain often have to adapt to humans' presence. The replacement of Bison antiquus in North America by Bison bison, or the succession of modern cattle from aurochs (Bos primigenius) in Europe, were marked by notable reductions in body size after centuries of evolving, interbreeding and hunting. The ecological legacies of human activities are pervasive and often subtle. Each environment has a history and preserves a record of its past. Part of Yeo's mission is to show how these ghostly records should inform decisions about how best to recover some of nature's past diversity as humanity moves towards a warmer and more uncertain future. [d41586-024] How to keep wildcats wild: ancient DNA offers fresh insights An important point in her account is that there is no pristine baseline, devoid of human activity, to which restorers might retreat. For example, the woodland around the French commune of Thuilley-aux-Groseilles seems to be a remnant of an old-growth forest. But the enrichment of soils from Roman agriculture is evident in its plant communities, with buttercups prominent around houses and enclosures, and the broad-leaved helleborine (Epipactis helleborine) found in remoter areas. Yeo concludes that "the natural world has drifted so far from its origins that we no longer know what counts as natural". It is impossible to establish what an area of land would have looked like or how it would have functioned before humans. Stuck in the present Yeo identifies three challenges for efforts to turn back history. First, as with the difficulty of identifying past white-tailed eagles in Wales, conservators often do not even know what is missing in an ecosystem, much less how they once worked. Second, climate change renders moot any effort to return ecosystems to how they were during, say, the seventeenth century, let alone the Pleistocene -- and future conditions will differ from those now or in the past. Third, there are too many humans on the planet to leave substantial parts of it untouched. Green landscape with white-tailed Eagle Observatory on three wooden posts. White-tailed eagles (Haliaeetus albicilla) on a reserve in Wales. Credit: Getty I am all in favour of continuing to repair the ecosystems of the Rocky Mountains in North America, by rebuilding populations of American bison, wolves, mountain lions (Puma concolor) and grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis). But encounters with humans often end badly for these animals, imposing practical limitations to their reintroduction. Whereas people in low- or middle-income countries most affected by climate change and environmental degradation stand to gain the most from the restorations described by Yeo, the majority don't have the luxury of considering rejuvenating nature. Although Yeo does not consider environmental justice and economic inequality as deeply as one might wish, she does recognize that the growing human population limits the opportunities for rebuilding now-vanished landscapes. [d41586-024] These animals are racing towards extinction. A new home might be their last chance Yeo asserts that properly understanding the past can be a key to building a richer future, not by trying to rewind the tape of history to some pre-human idyll, but by reinvigorating the natural world in a way that is sustainable and enriches lives. This does not require humans to be banished from wild places. Yeo views nature as "fragile but tenacious". Her vision is close to Leopold's a century ago. After the Gila Wilderness was established, he realized that wilderness must be more than a refuge for hunters; the wolves and mountain lions that hunters killed were essential to functioning ecosystems. Nature's Ghosts underscores how people have more choices than they realize when it comes to crafting a better future. The book rejects as false the dichotomy between urbanization and economic growth or untrammelled wilderness. Enriching landscapes and healthy ecosystems can coexist with building modern economies. But achieving this goal requires a deep knowledge of what has been lost and an appreciation for the resilience of species in the face of environmental tumult. Importantly, it requires acceptance that, although the future will not be a simulacrum of the past, a future with richer biodiversity is attainable. Nature 632, 974-975 (2024) doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-024-02761-3 Competing Interests The author declares no competing interests. 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A new home might be their last chance * [d41586-024] Current conservation policies risk accelerating biodiversity loss Subjects * Biodiversity * Conservation biology * Agriculture * Evolution Latest on: Biodiversity Drosophila are hosts to the first described parasitoid wasp of adult flies Drosophila are hosts to the first described parasitoid wasp of adult flies Article 11 SEP 24 How to support Indigenous Peoples on biodiversity: be rigorous with data How to support Indigenous Peoples on biodiversity: be rigorous with data Editorial 10 SEP 24 No basis for claim that 80% of biodiversity is found in Indigenous territories No basis for claim that 80% of biodiversity is found in Indigenous territories Comment 04 SEP 24 Agriculture How farming could become the ultimate climate-change tool How farming could become the ultimate climate-change tool Spotlight 19 JUN 24 How to address agriculture's water woes How to address agriculture's water woes Spotlight 19 JUN 24 Organic product legislation ignores agricultural plastic use -- that must change Correspondence 04 JUN 24 Nature Careers Jobs * Staff Scientist - Immunology Staff Scientist- Immunology Houston, Texas (US) Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) [] * Institute for Systems Genetics, Tenure Track Faculty Positions The Institute for Systems Genetics at NYU Langone Health has tenure track faculty positions (assistant professor level) at the new SynBioMed Center. New York City, New York (US) NYU Langone Health [] * Faculty Position The Institute of Cellular and Organismic Biology (ICOB), Academia Sinica, Taiwan, is seeking candidates to fill multiple tenure-track faculty position Taipei (TW) Institute of Cellular and Organismic Biology, Academia Sinica [] * Postdoctoral Associate Houston, Texas (US) Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) [] * Associate or Senior Editor, Nature Energy Job Title: Associate or Senior Editor, Nature Energy Location: New York, Jersey City, Philadelphia or London -- Hybrid Working Application Deadline:... New York City, New York (US) Springer Nature Ltd [] You have full access to this article via your institution. Download PDF Download PDF Related Articles * [d41586-024] Rewilding the planet: how seven artificial islands could help a dying Dutch lake * [d41586-024] How to keep wildcats wild: ancient DNA offers fresh insights * [d41586-024] These animals are racing towards extinction. A new home might be their last chance * [d41586-024] Current conservation policies risk accelerating biodiversity loss Subjects * Biodiversity * Conservation biology * Agriculture * Evolution Advertisement Sign up to Nature Briefing An essential round-up of science news, opinion and analysis, delivered to your inbox every weekday. Email address [ ] [ ] Yes! Sign me up to receive the daily Nature Briefing email. I agree my information will be processed in accordance with the Nature and Springer Nature Limited Privacy Policy. Sign up * Close Nature Briefing Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter -- what matters in science, free to your inbox daily. Email address [ ] Sign up [ ] I agree my information will be processed in accordance with the Nature and Springer Nature Limited Privacy Policy. Close Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. 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