It has its own integrity, reality, and history. Life lives off life in nature. Animals have to eat each other. There's a proliferation of life that leads to competition for scarce resources. When I look at nature, I see death more than I see life.
Death is the necessity that makes life possible.
But it's not. Nature does get out of balance, even without humans making things worse. Your essay expresses a deep concern for animals that seems compatible with the views of those concerned with the rights of animals. They want to protect animals from us. I think that that is a wrong way of contextualizing the issue.