I also find it absurd that the protection of "the planet", which can mean a vast array of things nowadays, should be compromised against business interests. To me, it seems natural and intuitive that business interests should triumph over such environmental concerns at almost every turn.

I continue to maintain that a man-made mass extinction means nothing to us as a species. In fact, I see no reason to oppose the mass extinction of all other species other than humans, other than for a loss of aesthetic appreciation of such species.

Perhaps there are risks of food supplies being slashed due to a loss of pollinators, but artificial pollination is not theoretically impossible. I don't see any reason why we couldn't develop artificial pollination to replace pollinators completely.

Perhaps there are also risks of there being new disease vectors due to the rise of certain species in the absence of their natural competitors, or perhaps we fear that the extinction of one species could lead to the growth of another which will in turn harm us - but such fears seem so remote or insignificant that they hardly seem worth addressing. Even supposing such species become an issue, it doesn't seem unlikely that within a few centuries we would have found a way to kill off all species which are detrimental to mankind with the advancement of new technologies.

To me, the prioritization of aesthetic pleasure received from viewing some wild animals over the very real gains of economic benefits seems to be a very odd misplacement of priorities indeed.