We might picture nature as being better off without us. On the ground the story is more murky• Don’t get Down to Earth delivered to your inbox? Sign up here to get the newsletter in fullIf I ask you to conjure up a vision of “nature”, what comes to you? For most of us, I think our minds go to the pristine. Untouched rainforests, vast savanna grasslands, deep thickets, inaccessible mountains. Somewhere remote, somewhere uncontaminated, somewhere free of the touch of humans.But those visions only represent a tiny fragment of the world’s biomes. The vast majority of the natural world – including more than 90% of temperate forest – has now been occupied by humans for thousands of years. We’ve radically reshaped nature with our presence, often in catastrophic ways.In Ukraine’s bombed out reservoir a huge forest has grown – is it a return to life or a toxic timebomb?‘Landmines have become the greatest protectors’: how wildlife is thriving in the Korean DMZ Continue reading...