In Australia in recent decades, the bilby, the bettong, or rat kangaroo, the brush-tailed possum and other medium-sized mammals all disappeared from the Western Desert. It was a mystery: Typically bigger animals vanish first — often only after people show up.

But ask the people who lived in this desert for 48,000 years what happened and many will tell you: They left.

“A lot of Martu people say that if there’s no people out in the country, then all the animals become absent. When the people and animals are absent, then the country becomes sick or unwell. There’s no balance there,” said Curtis Taylor, a filmmaker and young leader of the Martu community.

With all the damage done to the planet’s environment in recent centuries, it’s easy for some to think of humans as the planet’s great destroyers. But in a study published Friday in Human Ecology, scientists critique this notion of a human-free wilderness. By examining how an Aboriginal Australian community have shaped their land through traditional hunting, they present an example where it’s not all bad to have humans around.