I have beavers in my area too—I'm well aware that dammed lakes are their own rich ecosystems full of niches for other species to thrive in. The comparison was d

I have beavers in my area too—I'm well aware that dammed lakes are their own rich ecosystems full of niches for other species to thrive in. The comparison was deliberate: There's no reason why humans shaping the environment has to be a bad thing. Obviously the way we're doing it now is bad—I'm not disputing that—but we could simply do it well instead. Of course, when species are destructive to their environments, that's natural too. Consider the mass extinction caused by cyanobacteria back when they first evolved. It's not "nature" we want, it's biodiversity and healthy ecosystems. Shrinking the human population to 500M might feel "natural" to some people, but it really has little to do with our actual environmental goals.