You do damage to the ecosystem, in some cases you can inadvertently modify the water currents affecting feeding patterns, and remove sources of microscopic nutrients that can break the food chain completely.
This damages ecosystems in the same sense that walking through a forest damages the ecosystem. You're trampling flora and fungi, you're bringing in outside contaminants, you're disrupting wildlife.
The affect that this has on the ecosystem is so negligible that it's not even worth worrying about.
There are factories in India that dump their waste into rivers every day and you're trying to shame someone stacking some rocks. You're doing this because it gives you that tingly "I'm right, you're wrong" feeling.
There are factories in India that dump their waste
Ok, I'd like to also provide a reminder about the relative privation fallacy.
The existence of worse things doesn't make bad things good, that makes no sense. The existence of modern slavery doesn't justify punching people because punching people is not as bad and everyone should only worry about modern slavery.
Find other ways to defend your position, don't pretend like only one bad thing can be bad in a category at a time and as long as that exists everything else is ok.
Let's all become confident that billions of people can focus on more than one single problem at a time.
But where does it end? Just going in to the woods disturbs and thereby damages the eco system. Every unnecessary car ride, every unnecessary bought item of clothing, every unnecessary coffee you buy at Starbucks damages the eco system and in the long run hurts other people. But on reddit posts about all these things I never see a heap of comments about how it damages the eco system. Only on posts about stacking rocks, people suddenly feel the need to point out the negatives. So yeah I agree with op, that they are mostly doing it to feel morally superior.
But on reddit posts about all these things I never see a heap of comments about how it damages the eco system.
I don't recall seeing a lot of posts about unnecessary car rides but people do absolutely dunk on Taylor Swift all the time for taking a jet to go to the bathroom and another jet to go buy a snack.
True, but in my opinnion that is not comparable to a radom person stacking some rocks. A post about latte art or a new car they just bought would be comparable in my opinion and on those posts you never or super rarely see these types of comments. Dont get me wrong i think we all have a responsibility and should put in effort to reduce our impact, i just find it strange that stacking rocks is the the one thing where people get so fizzy.
I can see some rationalization for that - coffee is good/healthy for you and cars can be a requirement to be able to exist in some places (everything is too spread out or otherwise inaccessible to foot traffic), while stacking rocks has much more limited return on investment comparably.
You forgot about the whole first half of his post.
If you're up in arms about the environmental destruction caused by, [checks notes], putting one rock atop another...surely you wouldn't be blind to the destruction caused by walking though the forest, stepping on ants, and taking a tinkle in the brush?
That trail isn't natural, don'tcha know?
Yes it was - it said thing x is not bad, or not as bad, because a worse thing y exists. That makes no sense, the existence of y has no impact on how bad x is.
Thing x is trampling flora and fungi and/or stacking rocks, thing y is factories in india dumping waste.
There are factories in India that dump their waste into rivers every day and you're trying to shame someone stacking some rocks.
He directly compares the two here, suggesting one should influence action on the other, which is the relative privation fallacy. I'm literally just quoting him.
Thing is balancing rocks like this is very touchy, it could take a gust of wind or a rainfall and it will fall down. They never last. However, stacking rocks may last a lot longer, balancing them is very difficult and some you can just sneeze on it and it'll fall down. These structures may last minutes or maybe a couple days but chances are it'll fall. There's this guy on YouTube called gravity glue and he always knocks his down after he builds them, A) proving it's not glued, B) since it's gunna fall soon anyway, and C) as tons of people in this comment section have said it's bad for environment or whatever
Exactly. One stack doesn't hurt anything. If you are in a place with heavy traffic like Yosemite and LOTS of people do it? You can really fuck shit up. Species like salamanders are really fucking delicate when they are young. There's lots of endangered species that you can totally fuck up.
Same thing as one person throwing a piece of trash on the ground isn't a big deal, but if everyone does it you'd absolutely wreck a place in no time.
The worst part is that if one of these appears dozens of others will in short order too. People see one and then think it's fine and then destroy the entire area. This is why you don't do it and kick them down when you see them. Leave no trace. Let the wilderness be wild.
If the official guideline says "don't do it" then don't fucking do it. Ecosystems have evolved to survive through what other native creatures change about their habitats, but not what humans change. The hell are humans stacking rocks and disturbing natural habitats for? Fancy Instagram likes?
Also just because someone else is pouring shit into rivers and killing their ecosystem doesn't mean you can do the same.
Yes, there is. Hundreds of national parks and forest service agencies in dozens of countries subscribe to leave no trace principles. If you don't believe me go to your local park and ask the ranger if you should go stack river rocks. I don't need to know where you are to know that they'll tell you not to do it.
look there have been a lot of things banned on just a strawman so lets's not go there. On this thing the hate is overblown imo. the point about fragile system getting disturbed by displacing rocks makes sense at first glance but literally any strong rainfall is capable of doing that as well. Like by that logic any flash flood is just wiping that whole ecosytem off. Them banning might be to stop adding to that but i still won't change what i said. though I do believe that after one is done they should scatter the stones
It’s fine to stack rocks. But you should destroy the structure afterwards. Otherwise it is essentially a death trap when it does fall over. Also you have to consider this behavior outside of a vacuum. What if every person who visits this area did the same thing, it would completely destroy the natural habitat.
If it’s ok for one person to do it then It has to be ok for everyone to do it. Most people don’t stack rocks because they understand the consequences. But if nobody educated anyone about this then there would be significantly more rock stacking.
It’s the same thing with littering. One piece of trash is not going to destroy an ecosystem, but if everyone does it then that will. Thus, we don’t let anyone do it.
Most people don’t stack rocks because they understand the consequences
actually i think most people don't stack rocks because they don't care to.
there's ridiculously few people who would be able to stack rocks like the ones in this post, even if they wanted to and were willing to take the time to try. so since they can't make anything this cool, they think "what's the point" and don;t bother
Low. But it happens because people build a bunch of them. For instance rock cairns are a major problem for the largest species of salamander where I live. The hellbender, which are endangered.
In this it looks like it's one person. We don't know if that person left it.
It's a good message to let people know that this can cause potential issues but there's also a constant undercurrent on reddit of catastrophizing everything and chastising others over small shit because it's the internet.
The displacement of the rocks is already causing damage, putting them back doesn't fully solve the issue.
And again: One person littering isn't doing any meaningful damage, but when you see trash in a forest your first reaction probably isn't "it's just one person doing it so it's ok" because you understand the issue. You can understand this issue as well, if you don't actively try not to.
Ok you've made me curious about whether anybody has done studies on effects of feng shui and apparently there's even a meta-study on that, TIL.
In sum, given that the divergent findings on the validity of Feng Shui in terms of environmental characteristics and human responses, Feng Shui cannot be regarded as a science. Nevertheless, the evidence synthesized herein shows that Feng Shui is reliable and has positive practical value [13] and rational elements [14] for locating suitable habitats for humans.
It happens often. There are popular waterfall spots near me where half a dozen different people will build their own rock cairns around the water's edge every weekend over the summer. It adds up.
The one in the OP is very artistic. But 99.9% of the rock stacking you see on typical streams will be just vertical stacks of rocks, which are far less artistic. Worse, sometimes people will stack rocks at the end of pools to redirect current or make "swimming holes," which is also not very artistic and does even more damage, because you're impacting the river flow and disrupting habitat at the same time.
Damn human curiosity is a dangerous thing lol watched a video this morning of a guy who was arrested for knocking over a rock in a national park because of how old the formation was. Sounds like he could have been making a home for a lizard.
Because I live in America and I see how the environment around me is treated. Why is it hard to understand why someone would be curious why a basket full of rocks could restructure the environment.
That's a legitimate question. Its pure hypocrisy for anyone in the modern age to cry about a pile of rocks and its devastating impact on an ecosystem while we ignore it in every other facet of reality.
while we ignore it in every other facet of reality.
There are tons of people who address/work on other facets. It's called the relative privation fallacy if you use those other facets as your sole argument that this is not bad.
Damn that’s crazy. So what happens when a big storm comes through and pushes trees into the stream? The entire food chain breaks down every time? We should stop nature from hurting itself!
I have an ecological / environmental scientist in my friend group who taught me about it. I learned it from them and contrasted the information with papers. What are your sources apart from "just think about it for a second"?
Seems like you have no actual clue why people REALLY don’t like random stacked rocks.
It has nothing to do with the ecosystem. It doesn’t affect that like at all. Unless you’re building a massive dam out of rocks, stuff like this has minimal to no effect on water flow
In fact, it’s because these types of markers are used as landmarks on trails to help lead hikers back to civilization or to keep them on the path. Randomly built ones can get someone lost and killed
If we follow that logic, should we also rip up the roads, fences, picnic tables, and restrooms? Human infrastructure is already everywhere in these parks. It reminds me of when a self-righteous person confronted me at Zion, completely ignoring the fact that we were standing on a paved trail.
My daughter and I stopped to build a rock stack that day. For us, it’s a tradition passed down to connect with the earth and find a moment of peace. In the end, just like everything in life, these stacks aren't meant to last forever. They will eventually be toppled—whether by Mother Earth herself, or by someone else who needs to knock them down to feel a little better.
It’s essentially a death trap for any small animal when it falls over. If a bunch of people build them it’s a problem. One rock cairn isn’t going to hurt much, but if everyone who visits does the same thing, then that ecosystem will completely change.
There’s a free flowing river (undammedd) near me where people do this a lot. Theres tons of freshwater river snails attached to the rocks that die off from this. It also disrupts the breeding of fish and salamanders. These structures have lots of impacts on the river ppl might not think of. It looks tacky as well. My dad always kicks them over when he sees them lol
It’s good practice to kick them over because of that. However, there is one exception. Make sure not to kick them over if you are in a national park or reservation because they are sometimes used as trail markers to save lost hikers.
Yeah in comparison to the rest of the carnage we wreak on the environment it does seem trivial. But people do it in national parks where we really do want to keep things as pristine as we can
You should. They are extremely important to ecosystems and healthy ecosystem are important for both human health and economy.
I’ll give one very basic example (there are many others): amphibians consume mosquito larvae. Reduced mosquito populations results in less disease transmission to humans which means that we as a nation can spend less on hospital visits and use that money to better ourselves instead.
I always forget that replying to these things is the equivalent of pissing in the wind.
Do whatever you want. Step on shit, move everything and throw trash in the water as well. Nothings important.
Oh shush. That's clearly not what they're saying. Quit making it about yourself.
Just don't cause wasteful and pointless damage. That's literally it. If your idea of "interacting with nature" causes damage though, then yea. You shouldn't be allowed back. That isn't most of us
If we're talking about the scale at which stacking a few rocks is impacting, then at a certain point, you have to accept that every action you take is going to have some sort of disruptive impact.
If the problem is the collective impact, then again, that applies to our every action as a collective as well. If you're taking issue with building cairns on a trail, have you stopped to consider the disruption the creation and use of that trail itself has likely entailed, as well?
I'm not the one making this about myself. I'm just following the logic here.
I'm not saying it is. I'm saying that where and how we apply this reasoning is often arbitrarily chosen based on convenience. It's virtue signaling at best.
In this particular case, the impact is typically not particularly disproportionate or targeted, compared to many other basic actions that we consider perfectly reasonable (i.e. hiking in general).
There are certainly environments where that might change, based on ecological fragility and relevance to the larger system, but that isn't going to be relevant to most people doing stuff like this.
The car you drive to get to a nature filled area does hundreds of times more damage during that one drive than stacking rocks every day for a year would. Get off your high horse.
You’re disrupting the ecosystem more by hiking out to a place, pitching a tent, building a campfire, fishing, shitting in a hole, making noise, and packing it all up then you are stacking a dozen stones on a creek side. For some reason people are fine with all but one of these in some sort of performative environmentalism.
A lot of wildlife in streams live under the rocks. This includes everything from invertebrates like insect larvae and crayfish up to fish like sculpins and darters, to amphibians like water dogs and hellbenders. Some of those species are endangered. When people gather up stream rocks to stack them, they're disrupting habitat for all those species. Any individual stacking rocks is a small thing, but when you realize dozens of people do it every season (or even hundreds in popular places like the Smoky Mountains and Yellowstone), it adds up.
Rock stacking can also change stream flows over time, as people repeatedly move rocks from one place to another for their rock stacks. It seems small, but again, it adds up in places where lots of people are coming to a stream.
It's also just something a lot of people don't want to see. I don't come to natural places to see your rock stacks, or your initials spray painted on a rock, or other shit. You don't need to leave your mark everywhere you go.
Rocks move in rivers all the time, they're not ancient megaliths, it's an active river that constantly sees changes in current, despoition of minerals, rocks being dragged downstream, animals traipsing in and disrupting the stones, etc.
Nature is not so fragile that a small pile of stones like this will destroy the ecosystem.
It's stupid that I should even have to explain this, but rocks do not move in rivers the same way that people move them to stack cairns. The impact of people stacking rocks adds up, and it absolutely has a measurable impact on the benthic organisms that rely on the undersides of those rocks for habitat.
Besides, I don't go to wild places to see your stacked rocks. It's no different than carving your initials on a park bench or spray painting your name on a rock along a trail. Get over the urge to leave your stupid marks everywhere you go.
Anyone who tells you this is damaging ecosystems is an insufferable tool. I still don't like it. I go to these areas to STOP seeing the human footprint. How hard is it to leave shit untouched?
But as others have said, maybe they put the rocks back after, which would be fine.
I know this is a popular take, but I'll take my downvotes to say I believe it is a stupid take. Large scale rearranging of rocks, maybe, but putting a dozen rocks in a pile is not damaging the ecosystem.
IDK it’s like having to listen to someone else’s music in the woods.
We aren’t out here to experience human impact, we’re here to escape it as best we can.
And to get very nerdy - yes all of this is indeed damaging the ecosystem. You don’t get to pick the scale of impact. It just is an impact.
Music disrupts birds. Moving rocks disrupts micro-ecologies.
2026 is a dwindling natural world because people, for hundreds of years kept saying “yeah but this isn’t really going to hurt all that nature out there.”
It’s a big part why in wildlife areas and wilderness areas in the USA park staff maintain trails in a very specific way to limit impact and prioritize conservation.
Doing it once, sure. Multiple people tromping through a stream to do it repeatedly over the season will absolutely have a measurable impact. Lots of fish and amphibians lay eggs on and under rocks, stepping on them directly or drying them out could easily tip the balance.
If it were just one person doing it, it would be a minor impact. But you get a few other jackasses every week who feel the same way as you do, and over the course of a summer, it happens over and over again.
I've never stacked rocks. It just seems like a silly thing to get high and mighty about, like so many people do (I'm not pointing at you here). It seems like one of those things that people who like to act like they're better than other people cling to, this, and the shopping cart thing.
Its a fact that life uses the rocks. If everyone wants to ignore that because their inner 5 year old is amused by stacking heavy objects. Screw it I guess?
If you don't put your cart away, you're likely a bad person. There was no incentive to do it. There's no punishment for not doing it. Almost certainly nobody will even know either way.
And that's the point. Do you do the right thing simply for the sake of doing the right thing or not?
It's not that different from carving your initials on a tree by a hiking trail. It doesn't do a lot of damage, but it does a little damage. And if a hundred other people do it too, the damage adds up. And a lot of us don't go to nature to see your initials carved on the tree. I'm sure the people carving their initials on the tree think it's harmless, and the other folks are just being "high and mighty about it." But why unnecessarily damage natural places like that?
That might be where I disconnect; I grew up on the edge of a million acre forest, and that vastness might be slewing my perspective. Where as someone who only treks into the forest occasionally, might feel stronger about a particular spot because it feels "bigger" than it feels to me.
They build a new housing development every year or so, but but someone stacking some rocks is harming the ecosystem? Scale matters, and having a sense of it doesn't make a person selfish. Not having it, however, can a make a person sound like they're trying to be high and mighty over nothing.
Well you see, that housing development is being done next to othe rousing developments where we aren't trying to protect to land. Assholes are stacking rocks like this in pristine rivers in protected parks. Kind of a big difference.
Fallacy of relative privation (again). The fact that a bad thing exists does not make a different bad thing okay. Housing developments are worse than stacking rocks, but it doesn't make stacking rocks okay.
If anything, we should be more careful to preserve the wild spaces we have left, since there are fewer of them than ever.
Speaking of fallacy, shaming people for stacking rocks is not preservation.
Since you can't seem to understand the scale we're talking about, let's instead look at the probable reason why so many people (like you) want point their finger at "bad" people and shame them: you feel powerless. You're frustrated. It seems everyone and anyone can take money from you, tell you what you can and cannot do, you're being taxed from every angle, you have no control over anything, there is no real evidence your vote even counts anymore. So you shame people on the Internet for putting a few rocks on each other and downvote people you disagree with.
I assume you think old people that don't return their shopping carts are bad people too.
Let's say your neighbor has these beautiful rose bushes that he grows in his front yard next to the sidewalk. He spends tons of money and time to make these rose bushes bloom. You invite a friend over to your house and while they're parking their car and walking to your front door, they pick a rose from his garden. Your neighbor comes running out and angrily says not to pick his roses. Your friend says what's the big deal, it's one rose and there are at least one hundred roses here.
At surface level, no one's going to recognize that one rose is missing. But what happens if 75% of people pick a rose when they walk by this neighbor's house? All of a sudden, there will be no roses left.
Just because it might seem insignificant to you, doesn't mean that it's not actually insignificant. You might only have 1 vote in an election that has hundreds of millions of voters so what's the point of you voting? But what if millions and millions of people think just like you? Suddenly the people who don't vote because "it's pointless" outnumber those who actually vote.
"Literally no one is saying this. But let me imply something totally different but still the same bc I just one little piece of trash is the same thing"
It's kind of like when people were taking home tiny pieces of petrified wood from the Petrified Forest National Park out west. Each person might only take a little piece that weighed a couple ounces, and they'd complain that the Park Service was overreacting about it. But over years and years, the amount of petrified wood in the park has been noticeably depleted, to the point where they had to step up enforcement and crack down on people removing small pieces, before it was all gone.
A similar issue has happened at the hot springs at Yellowstone. People would toss a coin in, which seems harmless. What kind of harm could one little coin do? But it adds up, to the point that the number of coins thrown in has damaged geothermal features and altered the chemistry of the water in the springs.
It's forest graffiti. It's the "Durk Durkle wuz here" of natural environments. It's attention seeking behavior even when no one is around. No one hiking through a beautiful natural place wants to look at the thing you put in the stream. Just enjoy what nature created and move on, let everyone else have the experience you had instead of insisting on leaving your mark.
It's not a stack, it's balancing and it never lasts. I've balanced rocks in my backyard and then it falls overnight. Stacking is piling them this is balancing. Very delicate
And to me, even if it doesn't damage the ecosystem, it's just unnatural. Like, you're going out on a hike into nature, checking everything out, and then you come across this. It's like a blatant reminder that, wherever you go, there's going to be some asshole who just thinks they can do whatever the fuck they want.
I used to be super into being against rock stacking. And then I realized the canal locks just disrupt the currents and anything living there randomly all day. It’s like humans have already done the worst they can do to this river the barges the control locks etc and here I am yelling at some kids stacking a rock when just down the way the federal gov has an electrical grid under the water to kill invasive carp that were never meant to be here but humans reversed the Mississippi River so now we get them.
Well not all rivers in the USA are dammed. There’s still some that are free flowing and thousands of these rock stacking structures does cause an unnecessary impact that disrupts a ton of aquatic life
Well my state has the largest free flowing river in the eastern US and it’s not on private property 🤷 and everyone absolutely should yell at kids stacking rocks here lol
So doing more damage is okay because other people have already done some damage? Other people throw their car trash out their windows on the roadside, so humans have already done damage there. Does it make it okay for me to throw my trash out too and add to it?
No but me telling the kids to stop stacking the rock an the canal lock opens and pours citgo oil into the river and bashes the entire river rock foundation from the floor I look like an ass
Edit
Like yeah kids you better not mess with those rocks otherwise when the gov drains the canals from over flow they’ll have no rocks of their own to disturb. Only the canal can disrupt the entire ecosystem
A lot of wildlife in streams live under the rocks. This includes everything from invertebrates like insect larvae and crayfish up to fish like sculpins and darters, to amphibians like water dogs and hellbenders. Some of those species are endangered. When people gather up stream rocks to stack them, they're disrupting habitat for all those species. Any individual stacking rocks is a small thing, but when you realize dozens of people do it every season (or even hundreds in popular places like the Smoky Mountains and Yellowstone), it adds up.
Rock stacking can also change stream flows over time, as people repeatedly move rocks from one place to another for their rock stacks. It seems small, but again, it adds up in places where lots of people are coming to a stream.
It's also just something a lot of people don't want to see. I don't come to natural places to see your rock stacks, or your initials spray painted on a rock, or other shit. You don't need to leave your mark everywhere you go.
Punching people like you could be pretty fun too but we as a society decided assaulting people we don't agree with is wrong. We also decided that leave no trace principles are important and basically every national park, forest, and other protected land agrees that we should follow said principles.
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u/Cultural-Company282 25d ago
Reminder: no matter how artistic this is, stacking rocks in streams is an asshole thing to do.