Which holds that rather than a slow gradual change, species under go a rapid change and then are stable after that change.
If that hold true, then the driver would be that you have low impact changes going on all the time that do not take hold but once a beneficial change is introduced it spreads rapidly.
I agree with the criticisms that Gould, unfortunately, spent much of his career attempting to position himself as an intellectual revolutionary, overstating the primacy of PE and was in many important respects an intellectual fraud. Gifted as he was as a critic of intelligent design, I think he set back our understanding of evolution almost as much as he helped.
It seems such hybris to believe that mere humans have a better handle on what 'nature' needs, than, er, nature.
The embedded idea is both guilt-ridden and egotistic. Amazing destructive humans are harming 'nature' (antropomorphised) but other, good humans are here to redress the balance by doing this or that. At which point, whatever is there is no longer 'nature' but some sort of themed garden.