Huh? Sure, plenty of critters are going extinct. OK, sure, the 17 toed bullhorse is going extinct, but we still have a million of the 16 toed variety and the 18 toed variety. I guess we can also say anybody with dirt on the Clintons are also going extinct.
Is this big deal? Not really. It wasn't the end of the world when the dinosaurs died. It wasn't the end at the Great Flood. This isn't much different.
I disagree.
As someone who works in the medical field (and college education in organic chemistry, but never worked in this field except to utilize it in my writing, or incidentally as a paramedic around a HAZMAT scene), I think it's vitally important to preserve as many species as we can.
As an example, if a venomous snake becomes endangered, you'd be lucky if anyone would donate a dime.
Yet if it's a cute-faced monk seal (they are adorable animals), the bucks will roll in.
And here's my big point: life-saving meds come from the venom of dangerous reptiles. A drug called Beyetta--for example--is used very successfully to treat atrial fibrillation.....and it's processed from the venom of the pygmie rattler (Sistrurus miliaris). Contortostatin is a drug with a huge potential toward treating cancer patients. Apparently, it doesn't shrink tumors or prevent cancer, but what it does do is keep the cancer from spreading (metastizing). It doesn't work for blood cancers like leukemia, but it seems to work well on breast, lung, pancreatic, mesothelioma, ovarian cancer, and so on.
It comes directly from the copperhead snake (Akiskodron contortis).
A valuabe diabetes med and Parkinson's med come from the venomous gila monster (Heloderma suspectum) lizard's venom.
And so on.
Even the guts of termites yielded bacteria valuable for making new novel antibiotics.
I don't even believe that diseases should be rendered extinct. Malaria is a horrible illness, but--believe it or not--malaria can be used to cure syphillis. This technique fell out of favor with the advent of antibiotics, but this technique was revived in the 1990s when a woman--infected with Lyme disease, which is a spirochete like syphillis, but in a different family--was allergic to the antibiotics used in Lyme disease, so they infected her with malaria (Malaria falciparum, the worst kind), and it worked.
They then treated the malaria with different drugs.
So, we never know when--in this age of DNA analysis and genetic engineering--a plant, animal, or germ may come in handy against some horrific plague, which seems more likely because the Earth is out of balance.
