The ecosystem is a highly interconnected system, you are part of it and so are animals, and disrupting one part can have catastrophic ripple effects even on seemingly distant parts, and the secondary and tertiary effects can be very hard to predict until it actually happens.

Yes, extinctions are natural, but also, there is no need to hurry extinction along.

1. earth’s biosphere is one massive, connected system, so even the species that are “useless” to humanity can cause problems for us if they’re (re)moved from the ecological niche they evolved in, if for no other reason than losing efficiency as a carbon/toxin sink. Example: most people falsely believe that trees or the Amazon or whatever solely generate earth’s oxygen but most of it is created by phytoplankton in the oceans. So suddenly, all those “useless” species like dolphins and whales become extremely important to keeping the climate in balance. They’re all a part of a system that will kill us all if it becomes too unstable and crashes (and we know this because it has happened multiple times in Earth’s history).
2. As others have pointed out, just because YOUR culture doesn’t give a shit about the natural world and sees it as a giant piggy bank to be looted for human benefit doesn’t mean all human cultures do. It’s just as much about preservation of culture.
3. animals are cool 🤷‍♂️ why do they need to be “useful” to justify their existence? You aren’t directly useful to any of us here, does that mean your life doesn’t matter? This is capitalist logic, I’m sorry, you need to do some reflection on this.

Because animals are cool.

All animals play some part in the ecosystem, however small we may think it may be. The previous comments go into more detail, but the thing is that every part of the ecosystem can be seen as a contradiction, be it an antagonistic one or not, in the case of symbiosis. I urge you to think about the place of these “unimportant animals” in the ecosystem, as your observations seem very unmaterialist.

1. in the modern age and in the global north most deaths related to animals are the humans fault. one of the easiest things you can do is avoid bears, tigers and other predators. there is no need to kill these animals anymore and we can let them be because why cause death and destruction when its not needed?

2. cultural genocide: ive had this aching feeling you were white for a long time (no offense). why should we maintain tigers? the tiger is so important to asian culture and asian people that if you remove the tiger so much culture and pride is gone. for people of color in particular the big cats are so significant as cultural symbols of our power to the point where THE symbol for black-asian solidarity is a black panther and tiger together. in Shia Islam Imam Ali is associated with a lion.

Because if you kill all the lions, gazelles will start overpopulating and eat all the grass which will starve them as they will run out of grass as well as all the creatures that eat the gass. This will also harm the creatures living in the grass as well as they will not have shade and will be easier to spot by predators wanting to eat them. This will cause the prey to decrease in numbers which will starve the predators. If the predators exist for those predators they will also decrease in numbers.

even if we didn’t need biodiversity the natural world, produced through millions of years of evolution, holds irreplacable scientific treasures which are increasingly slipping through our fingers before we can grasp them. plus it is good for your moral character and happiness (or soul, if you will) to appreciate and take care of nature, as a part of the natural world humans and the rest of nature are tied. Plus life is cool.

You’re thinking like a production line instead of like an ecosystem. You were produced and are sustained by an ecosystem, as are all production lines you can think of. If you stop assessing your and mitigating destruction of the ecosystem, you and everything you care about will be destroyed when the ecosystem, which sustains you and everything you care about, stops being capable of sustaining.

i showed this post to your dog and they said they’re gonna start shitting on your bed from now on

Because endangerment of a species may be synptomatic of conditions that are detrimental to other species that you may care about.

The ecosystem is interconnected and the disappearance of one species may have cascading effects on other species that you may care about.

Also conservation of endangered species is just cool. I am not sure what qualms you have against it. Your last question and this one make me concerned about you. I hope it’s just because you are young.

biodiversity provides ecosystem resilience