Conservationists and park services have expressed concerns that the arrangements of rocks can disrupt animal habitats, accelerate soil erosion, and misdirect hikers in areas that use cairns as navigation waypoints.
[4] Michael Grab has said that in his experience balanced stones may stand for "months" if undisturbed,[2] and that he knocks his rock piles over himself, once he has photographed and documented them.
[8][9][1] Historic England have said that stone piling near a scheduled monument would be illegal if judged to have been at risk of damaging the site,[10] and on the Isle of Skye more than 100 locals organized to dismantle rock stacks left there by tourists.
[12] Leave No Trace recommends that rock balancers dismantle their piles and return the stones to their original locations when they're finished.
In a river in Pisgah National Forest, scientists have repeatedly found protected Eastern hellbender salamanders crushed under the piles of rocks that tourists build midstream.
[14][15] In Australia, rock-stacking was listed along with logging, mining and track construction as one of the threats to a newly discovered population of the mountain skink, a poorly-documented lizard species, in Wombat State Forest.