Hello Samira,
The World was created in a system as the one we see. Animals do not have an independent Spirit and no souls and they only follow a programming for the purpose they were designed. It may be painful to see an animal in pain and we obviously do not make it any worse for it unless we are sadistically inclined, but the animals are not really alive in the way we may be tricked into believing.
A human without any live Spirit, i.e. one that is broken, is not considered alive either by God but considered lifeless (al-mowt) meaning it is similar to an animal. A person that lives according to their instinct and goes on to toil every day and gather things they often do not need are included in that group of lifeless people. That behavior is of an animal even if the human happens to be relatively advanced. They do as according to the programming of the Body. However, because the Body has a Spirit attached even if dimmed, it is not okay to murder it.
If you reflect you can probably see that our Bodies were placed in a World with a lot of other animals with various complexity yet none of them are able to show the kind of Spiritual intricacy of the human soul, not even apes/monkeys which are considered to be fairly advanced for primates. Every animal is connected to the Holy Spirit and it is part of the Grand Consciousness but they are not individual entities.
Nature is violent but do we have to be violent because of that? That is a test obviously. Humans have a tendency to relate to what is around them to find what is acceptable. Today many scientists are on the track that the human is an animal and therefore it is okay to act like one and they compare some behavior to animals in general. That is a risky venture.
You may reflect upon whether what you see is not an illusion but just a tool to test you.
You think well however; this is a good thing to think about when we fill our needs in this World and what we struggle for and how much we consume. You only must realize that the World is actually not alive but dead and entities only follow their system without any independent consciousness. It is like a machine that continues to do what it is constructed for no matter what it does, it will not reflect upon why it does it. An animal screams of pain and the flesh suffers, but there is no Spirit to sustain the pain and thus it is something already dead that dies. If you know this and then begin to not care for animals and the nature then you fail the test as well because one aspect of the test is to show empathy. We must remember that through our animals and plants we stand in contact with the Holy Spirit.
On the other hand if you kill a human then you are killing a potentially living consciousness and it is against the Decree to murder.
Regarding cutting down trees, there are animals which thrive due to this action, particularly prey animals because they can feel the presence of predators more easily. It is a give or take. Unfortunately the chopped down trees decrease the oxygen production, may cause land erosion and other things. But you can see that by nature the whole system is meant to cooperate together in symbiosis which is another sign of God.
Your question was how God could be benevolent and loving given the design of the illusive World and I have not answered your question except added points to drive your mind away from being concerned about it. It is difficult to answer your question except saying that the World is an illusion and thus what you see is not entirely the reality you believe. What I have learned is that the World is actually dead except the Spirit realm that is truly alive. The cruel answer I can give is that if an animal dies it is irrelevant since the pain sensation is not absorbed by any real consciousness even if it sounds similar to that of a human in many cases. All that you see is like observing a game and taking participation in it and when an animal dies is like a scripted pain sound and its visual display is of blood sprinkling but it does have no serious implication other than one entity of the game world decomposes. It would not matter if a human Body dies either, but a Spirit is attached to it and it is foul play to murder a human because you deprive this person of a life cycle and a chance towards "beating the game".
God does approve of taking good care of the World that we live in because if we ascend to "Angel status" we are supposed to be rulers and then we must be able to take care of a World. This testing ground is a good way for us to show our capability. Unfortunately a grand majority of people fail miserably being careless about such things as the environment and the circle of the system implemented. If people cared they would sustain the system by for example replanting a variety of trees when they harvest a forest rather than just planting the tree that is most beneficial to them. Take for example if a tree farm plants only spruce or fir trees, they ought to know that this tree type causes a sour (low PH value) ground around the trees. You have to take a lot of factors into consideration. And tree farms will place the trees very densely, often too dense for it to be healthy for the environment, just to make the business profitable. The main culprit as usual is that fiscal matter that I dislike tremendously, and I know that friends of mine such as Jesus had the same opinion. People always like to become wealthy, it is not enough to simply have food on the table and tools for your profession, they always need vain and expensive decorations or property which makes them focus on profit to maximize their potential on that matter.
Rather than being concerned about an unloving God for a World without life you should be concerned about what matters for those pitiful souls who toil in their great delusion for nothing that is of any value.
God is very loving towards the living and is also benevolent towards those who are not yet living, giving them multiple opportunities to get there, becoming alive. In addition, God is also letting people coming alive serve as signs and beacons to express through the living that the radiating life turns the dead alive. But God cannot be too obvious because otherwise it would not be a test. Obviously if it was to be easier then God could speak straight down from the skies or make things that the deluded humans could not deny their origin. But the purpose was that man was to be heavily deluded with an option to themselves choose their destiny by cultivating their Spirit rather than pleasing the vain Body.
God is not doing any wrongdoing towards the lifeless but provides for them too and lets them live their lives. If that was not the case God could get rid of them at once, giving them no more opportunity or tell the living to systematically end their Body's energy. I hope you see that God is no tyrant. And life in this World is what you make of it and it is what you struggle for. If you fight hard to survive that is also stressing, if you worry about death that is stressing. Do not worry too much about the disabled and the poor because everything is neatly planned and you will have them always with you, but if you are able you may show mercy towards them and help them and that is good but you also need to make them realize that they must be good. But never make the situation any worse for them.
You need to be able to think and act like God, that is something worth keeping in your memory. And we must be able to think and act like God no matter what situation we are in and no matter what atrocities people commit towards us and not let the Beast take over.
Trust that God will take care of the 'ISIS' threat in the World. The prophecy of Isaiah makes mention of it and it was already prophesied in the past. "Take to arms and it will be thwarted" Isaiah prophesied. God never fails to do as promised. Violence is always the wrong way and violence must always be avoided and a good human should always strive with diplomacy and shrewdness into the last stand even when they already defend themselves. Spreading the Light of God is always important and to remain calm. Even if you strike down an opponent it should not be done in any rage and you should pity them for it having to come to that and that this was evil that came.
The only only way to counteract upon Islamism (or the Islamic delusion derived from a false interpretation of Quran at all) is through information and enlightenment or it will continue into infinity. It is important that I finish the reinterpretation of Quran and proclaim its message and calm down the sectarian Islamic masses who follow a delusion in the belief they do it for God while they do it only because they have been fooled and due to their instinct (satan). It is important that we proclaim that God stands for empathy and His fifth line in the eternal Decree implies on that heavily. What they do in the Middle-East is sternly against the Decree of God while they approve of it. No prophet has ever proclaimed a harsh line but every prophet spoke of love towards both kin and enemy. Moses was told by God "I am who am I" so every person was to "Be Who is as That" (allah) but they have turned the very word into separation from them through ignorance. Things are so wrong in every way that it is so sad to tell, but it was also prophesied already and the whole Quran was but a test in itself. Under the surface, Quran is a manual for teaching through its intended message and it gives advice on how to teach various topics to a crowd, yet it only as usual elaborates upon the already existing Ten Stumbling Blocks (Ten Commandments) without adding anything to the ancient Decree. Immanuel has come to thus do such to make the manual available to disciples who can then continue to teach in the same footsteps. Quran is structured in such a way the teacher is supposed to fill in with their understanding and is thus very open-ended and is designed more to raise awareness than being from A to B. It can say: "And explain to them vileness and passivity and respond to criticism about Being Such As It even if you make them confused about the facts of Being Such As It" (from 2:61), obviously you do not have a literal explanation by Quran but it is expected that the teacher using Quran has wits and knowledge about the topic.
Quran can thus be fairly useless to a person who cannot comprehend it as it is supposed to be a preacher manual with psychological tricks to catch the crowd's attention since it is can be very difficult to convince a sectarian crowd that God is a symbiotic phenomenon you are part of. Quran can continue like this:
...and the overwhelming difference about the true evidence even if you are not supported and make it disclosed / that ones faithful* (amenwa = acting with integrity of/acting so*) and ones who Recognize, and are Freed and Baptized "have integrity" as (amen) ‘Such As It’ and the process of adaptation and perform well, that such as they are is their recompense of consideration by their Sustainer and such distribution is onto them and such they obtain. (from 2:61 - 2:62)
* Amen here is marked as a verb. This word has puzzled interpreters for millennia and it is a hard word to translate. In the second occurrence it refers to condition. I think my morphological work on it begins to make it possible to translate into English. The problem with translation with the word is that is means "Be Thereof/Of Integrity (as)", how do you translate it into English? Perhaps it should be translated as "be so", (are/is so) but it sounds dull in English. Obviously in the passage 2:61 - 2:62 the "make it disclosed that "being/acting so" [Verb-marked]" fits with the context. Acting is also poorly translated I realize now but we must settle on "be so" I think. It is one of God's puzzle-like words like many such as "allah". As an interjection "amen" ought to mean "verily so/surely so".
Let us say: Amen to that!
Amen, I love God's neat humor. Amen I say to you, Samira, those who are blind wander in their own darkness, but please do not call God evil.
Rituals, worship, rites, additional laws and nonsense is what pretenders have extracted from it when they have sought to understand it from a sectarian point of view.
Be safe
Amenuel