“Humans are just a fossil-fueled outbreak that will go away”, stated one of my professors yesterday.
In the world investigating the human dimensions of natural resource management there’s two schools of thought as to how humans fit in: a) as just another particularly troublesome species in the ecosystem or b) a special kind of species with the ability to predict and change the future. This latter formulation hinges on humans as a species with “motivation” and “intent”, according to C.S. Holling.
Otherwise, however, humans should be able to fit into the ecological definitions and models we all learned in intro biology. At an extreme case, it means we’re the next trilobite or dinosaur, living in our 15 minutes of fame now but soon to disappear. In the process, we will pave the way for a new species to become dominant.