I hate this kind of bullshit.
Arguing about conservation is essentially an argument over one of two things.
Sometimes it's an argument about how we can save ourselves. Let me save you some time - we can't. We have messed up our own living space enough that in time it will become unlivable, and we will have to either adapt or move on to another place, another planet perhaps. We cannot save our species from what inevitably happens to every species that over-succeeds: it experiences massive die-offs as its population equalizes again to what its ecological niche can support. This will happen to humankind, but as a process, it matters very little to the rest of the world.
The rest of the time, the conservation argument is in truth about whether or not we can save the earth as it is right now. Here's another spoiler for you: we can't. The earth will recover from our depradations and incorporate what it can't dispose of into a new environmental structure. So plastic takes a long time to biodegrade? It will become useful in that time for some other purpose. Everything in the environment is forced into function eventually. Wildlife moves in to abandoned houses and broken trucks. Birds work thread and bits of plastic bag into their nests. Nothing is wasted. Nothing just sits there breaking down. Even that process of decomposition is useful to the bacteria that make it happen.
The truth is that on a long enough timeline, the earth will recover from everything we've done. It's not a terribly long timeline from a geological perspective either. Certainly it's not on a human scale, and perhaps that's what makes people have hissy fits. No, the earth will not turn into a primeval fucking paradise in your lifetime or your children's. And no, maybe the tigers and this particular bunny species can't be saved. That in itself is not a tragedy. Hundreds of species go extinct every day, from the microscopic to the large, fluffy and endearing. Hundreds of new species are forming every day as well, evolving from older models. That's how evolution works - unsuccessful species die off and more successful ones move into the space they left. This conservation bullshit is really just an attempt to save the species that we've gotten to like. It matters so incredibly much whether or not the white tigers are okay, but the bacteria and the insects that die out? Nah, never mind those.
Lemme break it to you - the white tigers were going to die out some day. With or without our involvement, they would eventually either die off and be replaced by another adaptation, or be changed beyond recognition by the slow, inevitable process of natural selection. Everything dies. Everything changes. If you think the world is going to look anything like it does today a million years from now, you're crazy. Nothing we do can make that happen. It shouldn't happen. We cannot arrest the process of change by any mechanism, no matter how fond we are of the spotted owl or the California condor.
The truth is that humanity is the most successful species we have ever known. We have evolved to live in every kind of environment the earth has to offer. We have yoked every kind of creature and plant to our need and put every kind of biome into service to feed, shelter and entertain us. Don't think for one minute that if wolves or ants had the opportunity they wouldn't do exactly the same thing. That acquisitive greed for more space, more resources, more reproductive chances is a part of every lifeform on earth, and it doesn't stop just because something evolves a cerebrum. The "graceful" dolphins, the "noble" wolves, the "beautiful" birds, or whatever new anthropomorphized monster is being plastered on lurid airbrushed posters and t-shirts today, are all myths. Each and every one of them would do exactly as humanity has done if they had the chances and the luck that we've had, because that's what successful species do. They wipe out every threat or perceived threat to their survival, they hoard every resource they can, they expand their territory as much as they can usefully control and administrate, and they reproduce as fast and as furiously as possible.
I'm not saying it's right. I'm not saying it's nice. But it's not unnatural. We are animals like any other animals, no better or worse, and the things we do are merely a larger-scale version of what every species does in its desperate attempt to be the best species, the longest-lived, the strongest.
This is impossible to squash out of the human animal, which is why conservation doesn't really work. You can wear your hemp pants and take your cloth shoulderbags to the grocery store all you like. You can recycle your newspapers and bitch out Girl Scouts because their cookies have too much packaging. But for every one of you that does those things, there are a hundred thousand people who don't give a shit. And those hundred thousand people will do more to ruin the environment for our future generations - which is really all we can even hope to affect with anything we do - than you and all your friends could clean up if you worked all your lives. The only thing conservation does is make you feel better. It's an attempt to assuage some nebulous guilt in your life by believing that you can make any kind of difference in the long-term fortunes of the planet. It's masturbation.
You don't have any control over what other people do. You don't have any way to fix what humanity has done, and all the screaming you could manage for the rest of your life wouldn't make most of the great dozing mass of humanity sit up and take notice. And if you somehow get off on feeling like you have some great talent or responsibility because you have an upper brain, banish that notion now. You and everyone else obeys the same natural impulses as does the rest of the world and every animal in it, and that goes for every glorious bald eagle, delicate white-tailed deer, and iridescent fucking Lisa Frank kitten out there. If they had hands, they'd build factories and nuclear power plants too.
