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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JustKim" data-source="post: 3162789" data-attributes="member: 5478">Human cities are not comparable to anthills or termite mounds. Even fire ants serve a crucial ecological role, and ants have adapted to living under nature, such as building toward the sun to keep egg chambers the perfect temperature. Without ants and other decomposers we would probably be knee deep in dead bodies, and in a setting with a lot of murderous monsters it would be worse. Beehives are responsible for the survival of about half the plant species on earth. Termites are adapted to eat fibers that most animals can't digest, decompose dead growth and replenish soil nutrients. Humans do not do these things. We've never adapted to give anything back because as soon as a behavior becomes difficult to continue, we use our intelligence to make it less difficult.Human cities are very destructive to environmental cycles. They strip soil nutrients. They close or restrict water flows. They stop resources and minerals from going where they need to, cause beaches to erode, and even in a dark ages setting pollute air and water locally on a destructive scale. Human waste and burial customs mean that consumed nutrients are usually completely wasted. The only living things beside humans which thrive in cities are opportunist species that thrive wherever native species cannot compete with them. I could go on for pages.I don't really have an opinion on the urban druid, but this "human cities are ecosystems too" is absurd.</blockquote>

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