Humans are the only creatures that have intentionally “given back to the Earth”. Other living things, be they animal, plant, or protist, are unconcerned with “harmony” or “symbiosis”. They simply take what they can until they die.
What do mice, for example, “give back to the Earth”? Well, they’re an important food source for other animals, but mice don’t go strolling into the jaws of cats, wolves, owls, etc. because they consider it their purpose in life. A mouse is concerned with eating, mating, and avoiding being eaten. The role of mice in the ecosystem is forced upon them by predators. It is a function of what predators have found mice to be good for, not a role that they accept and strive to live up to.
Natural selection has resulted in mice developing characteristics to help it avoid being eaten, but more significantly led it to breed at rates that allow it to keep up with predator attrition. Sometimes environmental conditions permit mouse population explosions (most spectacularly in Australia following wet spring weather). When this happens, mouse populations soar to absurd levels. They deplete their food sources, and die back to sustainable levels. Again, Nature’s Harmony" is something the various agents in the ecosystem enforce upon each other, not some sort of ethical code by which they circumscribe their own actions.
Various life forms exploit and modify their environment in ways that benefit them. If other life forms can share that benefit, then they do so. If they cannot, they die. When a beaver builds a dam, it benefits various plants and animals that do well around ponds. Animals that don’t, die or leave. Before long, all that’s left is a “harmonious ecosystem” of “symbiotic organisms”.
Plenty of organisms flourish in symbiosis with Man. I dare say there are many more dogs, cats, cattle, pigs, goats, corn, wheat, and rice plants, and so on, in the world than there would be without humans (to the extent that one views the dispersion of seeds as something that mice “give back to the Earth”, I think we clearly have them beat). Outside of intentional human cultivation, I would venture that human expansion has boosted the populations of numerous “prey animals” by reducing predators and increasing food supplies (including both human cultivation and waste), these would include various rodents, pigeons, certain songbirds, etc.
The negative human impact on “biodiversity”, therefore, is not a simple matter of humans “not giving back as much as other creatures.” Rather it is a function of humans prospering dramatically by virtue of being able to modify their environment in ways that other creatures could only dream of. Human expansion makes the global environment more uniform, and thus less suitable for species with a different optimal environment. Humans aren’t “draining” the Earth, so much as they’re homogenizing it.
I’ve always wanted to say that… Ducks the rotten fruits and vegetables currently on a trajectory intersecting her body Okay, okay!