I think I'll argue a case for Man, if you'll excuse me for taking a rather extreme angle in counterpoint...

Mother Nature is red in tooth and claw. The state where she rules with no intervention by man was named by Thomas Hobbes as bellum omnium contra omnes; the war of all against all.

Through ten thousand years of struggle, Man has won that war, at least over that part of nature that covers a thin layer of the surface of this pale blue dot. We cooperate with each other, we drain swamps, we dam rivers, we level mountains. The predators that once stalked us in the night, we have ourselves hunted to near extinction. Some of nature's terrors still plague us, and the fight is ongoing, but it is one which we are winning. Polio is soon to go the way of Smallpox, and one day Malaria is sure to follow, whether or not we must also bring extinction to the mosquitos that carry it. This is our manifest destiny.

If Mother Nature forgets where she stands when she pleads her case, the response should be the same as that Brennus gave at the gates of Rome: Vae victis.