On Extinction: Good or Bad?

Earlier I read a blog posting on Change.org about torture and rattlesnakes. More on the roundup issue. A response just now got my attention: (roughly quoted) "wouldn't letting a species go extinct be better than letting it get tortured over and over"? The answer is an unequivocal NO. Extinction is never a blessing. It results in the loss of biodiversity and the rearranging of entire ecosystems. We should do all we can to conserve all that is left of "nature" as we currently experience it Feelings like this from people that are not yet savvy about extinction are understandable in light of the terrible things some humans do to other living creatures, but the better alternative is to stop the abuse, not let the species go extinct. The possible exception would be the abusers themselves. I have no problem seeing them go extinct. To do that we need better laws and better enforcement of the laws we have. As competition for scarce dollars increases, the weak and helpless are more likely to lose. And if the weak and helpless are also reviled, feared and totally misunderstood, what chance do they have?

Image: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodo