Removing rocks from the stream bed or stream edge to stack or throw can be aesthetically pleasing, but very damaging to the habitat you remove them from in both the short and long term. In the short term you are altering water currents, potentially speeding up certain areas and slowing down others which not only displaces wildlife in both of those areas, but may result in neither being suitable for habitation. It also creates a cascading effect in water flow, causing sediment to settle in areas of what is now slow flow and increasing erosion in areas of high speed flow. This disturbs the physical environment of the waterway, as well as its chemical (nutrient), chronological (change over time) development, and oxygenation.
In the long term, moving rocks brings about another issue, which is erosion. All waterways are shaped by erosion, and a rule in geology is the bigger the rock, the more force it takes to move. This rule is universal from boulders all the way down to individual clay particles. Your ability as a person to lift an even moderately sized rock has a monumental impact on the dynamics of the waterway. In some areas, a rock that may fit in just the palm of your hand might only be able to be moved by a once in a generation flood event. A stack of 3 or 4 of these rocks removes the equivalent of HUNDREDS of years of potential habitats, oxygen infusion into the water, or accelerates/decelerates the rate of erosion in the area you removed/added the rocks by hundreds of years. Simultaneously, you are impacting the riparian zone (edge of the waterway), an incredibly important habitat for terrestrial, aquatic, and amphibious plant and animal life. Changes erosion at the edge of a stream, river, or lake impact the whole body of water in all of the same ways as listed above.
Knowing when not to intervene is an equally important aspect of being a good steward to your natural environment as knowing when to intervene. Let nature do it’s thing and you’ll have even more beauty to enjoy when you are surrounded by it
Rocks are also where most species lay eggs so you are probably smashin those little eggs and removing the ability for species to lay eggs easily :(
Also how fish avoid predation, so it could cause local ecological collapse
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Indigenous cairns ≠ stacking rocks to be aesthetically pleasing. Deeply colonizer mindset to think you have a right to alter the land in such a way for your pleasure, especially citing the fact that indigenous people do it
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My favorite reactionary argument on hexbear is "some non-specific indigenous people somewhere do this or something superficially similar to it therefore it is good and you can't criticize it"
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OK, show me the indigenous tribe which makes a tradition of uprooting riverbeds to form balanced-rock towers atop the rivers for fun and then I will criticize them.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuksuk
Whoops, looks like those are used as markers and not just for fun, and also don't have to be made from river rocks. Honest mistake, since you're arguing in good faith I'm sure you will now admit your mistake and cease this mistaken line of argument for the future. :brandon:
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There’s a huge difference between telling tourists and hikers to stop fucking shit up and suggesting the built environment human beings generally constrain themselves to ought to take a backseat to arthropods.
It should be clear which one the op is trying to say, owing to their words and the fact that it was posted on an english language website.
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The examples I see of that clearly have rocks that were on land, not in a river. But also the context is different, the ecosystem when indigenous people were in control of areas was far healthier and it would matter far less.
This particular issue with rocks is very prevalent in manmade lakes ponds and rivers, it can lead to a mass die off of implanted fish
those rock towers in the rivers were made by children trying to have fun.
the rock towers on land were taken out of a river to build them.
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that is the proper place for all poop. if you put your poop on the ground and not on your balls, you're destroying the earf. do better