Invaders !

[Kevin]

Reading your post, I was smitten with the thought "Is that really something we can call a fact though?" I mean, I'm not arguing that Humanity isn't invasive. But is it a proven fact that we ruin things more so than any other species?

Sorry, it's kind of trollish, but I would be hesitant to call it fact.

I think it's pretty well established that as a species we modify the environment more than any other species. Now I used the word modify there, not destroy, there are environments that would have been destroyed if we didn't modify them there are environments where we have destroyed the environment that was there when humans arrived that have turned into what is possibly a healthier or more stable environment. There are environments that are very stable as long as we still provide some intervention, other that we've changed that will "rebound" very quickly if we stop (farms fall in both categories there).

I can't think of another macro species (I'm excluding virus and bacteria here) that exists in pretty much every land environment on the planet, and has a major impact on nearly all of those environments. There are species that are also in all those environments now that are there because of us (rats/mice, dogs, fleas, and cockroaches come to mind, and yes roaches don't do well in the cold, if you take away all the humans from New York the roaches would die out within a couple of winters).

We aren't the only species that can heavily modify an environment, and we aren't the only species that tends to modify every environment it enters (ants and termites modify every environment they move to) but we do tend to do more of it, and do it everywhere. There are also a lot of us for such a fairly large mammal which causes a larger impact.

Just some thoughts.