@OP,
You've pretty much hit on why I have no tolerance for environmentalist who go off the deep end with environment/animals/insects/etc>humans type crap.
But for the most part I would say that intelligently preserving species is all well and good up to the point that you have to tell farmers to stop growing food on their own land to save an insect/bird/etc. Or more generally up to the point that you start putting at risk the livelihood and/or lives of humans directly or indirectly.
Humans do not exist outside of the environment any more than any other animal. We are part of it and our mere existence alters the ecological landscape. People can try to define which impacts are good and bad and how we should change it, but it really doesn't much matter in the end because no matter how we impact the environment we will be good for some species and bad for others.
If anything I think an argument could be made that by preventing natural selection from culling the less acclimated species we are priming the planet for a devastating mass extinction event down the road. It could be very similar to how trying to stop all fires in Yellowstone National Park created one of the biggest and worst fires in recorded history by not allowing small fires to clear away the dry underbrush which would eventually fuel the intense and prolonged blaze. Only in this case the kindling is the animals not suited to the environment that we are sheltering from being cleared away as nature intended.
Honestly, with our current level of cloning technology and prospects for future improvements I think preserving a species should mean taking sufficient DNA samples for later use as needed. There are certainly plenty of other moral questions to that prospect as well however, which sort of highlights the fact that saving/creating species in general will always have the "playing god" issues attached to it. So pick your poison really.
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| To Each Man, Responsibility |
