Rock balancing

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.