[toadpipe]

Individual members of populations of every species alter their environments. Humans may do it more deliberately, but as either civilizations or as a species as a whole it's not clear to me that we're all that much better at anticipating and avoiding environmental disasters than other species; we just do everything at a larger scale (more massive individuals, across the whole planet) than any other single species. Not necessarily longer time scales though - that remains to be seen.