I'm pulling this quote by Ronn_Bman from the other thread too:
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They wouldn't devour a "few" caged animals, they would devour them all. This would threaten the population of the caged animals "dramatically"...
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All I'll say is that ultimately we are shooting ourselves in the foot when we kill predator populations, as it disrupts the ecosystem in undeniable ways. Wolf populations are a fraction of a fraction of what they once were. Search online - it won't take you more than 5 minutes to find gruesome pictures of the genocide inflicted on these animals at "wolf hunts" all over the continent of North America. There's nothing like seeing a pile of wolf carcasses hundreds deep. We can put up with the few that are still around.
An undeniable assumption of the ESA: there is no single more valuable resource than that of a species-being. Once you extinct a creature, you lose all genetic information and related benefits it had. For instance, deforestation was pretty rampant and hectic in Madagascar over the past 20 years. After serendipidously finding a certain species of flower indigenous only to Madagascar, litterally *minutes* before it became extinct, scientists determined it had the "formula" for a plant derivative medicine that has become one of the few worthwhile treatments for blood cancer, such as Lupus (which my Aunt died of, BTW).
After this discovery, the USA sent *teams* of scientists to race ahead of the bulldozers and catalogue new species. Luckily, the flower at issue has everything in its genetic code (we have samples of the flower) to allow for the production of the medicine. However, that is not always the case, and sometimes you need the actual species itself present.
Species preservation is at the same time the most selfish, most compassionate, and wisest thing we humans can be bothered to do.
