Are we really that different from other animals anyway?
Yes. All other animals have their technics (world and culture building techniques) embedded within their genus and act as part of the total environing surround -- they are not really conscious of themselves.
However, humans are that part of nature that has become aware of herself, an emergence out of nature of nature becoming aware of herself. We are a distortion of space and time itself, able to reflect upon the deep structures of nature by means of warping and melding past, present and future into one -- a spatialtemporal clearing we call existence.
Has our intelligence and it's consequences unbalanced our ecosystems?
The unbalancing of the ecosystem is Human culture becoming detached from nature through our unshakable belief in instrumental reason. It is a sickness that gives us the very real impression Humans are one thing and Nature is another, when in fact we are nature itself. The sickness of the modern world is our culture becoming farther and farther disconnected from the deep wisdoms and rhythms of nature -- our Being. Heidegger talks about his stuff -- about space and time and the History of Being.
Unfortunately, nothing can be done about the problems with contemporary man and his empty culture. It's a sickness of divorced mediation and the contrived story narrative of the hubris of Man. However, it's nothing nature can't deal a knockout blow to in due course.
Greatest thinkers are all too aware of the current problem with Mankind, but are unable to get the message over to us, the message appears comically garbled and gibberish to us now. This is a result of semiotic meltdown of post-modernism and it being the only way we know how to communicate a message -- it's a web of sensical-nonsense; an ungrounded desert and total withdrawal of nature's eternal Truths -- the oblivion of Being.