The fossil records show evidence of other species which were so successful in their design that they became so overpopulated that they overwhelmed their environments, their food resources and everything, and drove themselves into extinction. We are not the first to take that path. It is not merely the fact of our intelligence which makes us so successful, but rather our intense (and often vehemently denied) aggressive instincts. Homo Sapiens began pulling away from the other primates starting about two million years ago when they began to stand and walk erect. Their mouths and teeth became smaller, and their guts smaller. They discovered MEAT. It was a whole lot easier to digest and to get the needed nutrients... the only thing was, it had to be caught, it had to be outsmarted, and then it had to be killed. So that is when and why our brains started to get bigger.
The fossil and DNA records strongly suggest that the indoeuropean strain of homo sapien were responsible for the genocide of the neanderthals across europe and northern asia, maybe 40,000 years ago, possibly accounting for the myth of Cain and Able in the hebrew tradition. We did not like the competition.
Now comes the day when we are using up resources of all kinds at such a headlong rate that our own extinction is clear to see for anyone with any perspective.... the seas are massively depleted of fish, the air sees fewer and fewer birds, the numbers of every species of large animal on earth are declining at alarming rates, the air is more and more polluted, the water as well, the environment is overrun with the volumes and varieties of unnatural drugs, acids, alkalines, plastics, petrochemicals, poisons of all kinds, fertilizers, radioactive isotopes, and all the other remarkable inventions our technology has invented but never bothered to figure out how to dispose of.
Mother Nature is exceedingly patient and slow-moving. She counts seconds in millions of years.
Plastics and all our other synthetic material manufacturing will all break down and disappear without a trace in a thousand years or so. All of our skyscrapers, bridges, and most of our other edifices will be totally gone, without a trace, within about ten thousand years. Stone monuments may take a little bit longer to wear down but within fifty thousand years they, too, will be gone. Chances are we won't even leave behind any fossil remains, most species never do. On a planet that has been around for 5 billion years, this is hardly more than an instant. Meanwhile, the remaining species, especially insects, will hardly even notice when we are gone.
Though we have done quite a bit of damage and will probably do even more before we expire, the odds heavily favor a complete recovery. and it won't even take that long, it will take even less time that it took us to evolve from the first Australopithicus who got up and walked away.
I can't wait.