Personally, I think the EPA goes way too far, protecting things that rightfully shouldn’t even be classified as separate species, but rather local subspecies. However, I think you’re going a little too far. The Earth is a huge place, and humans don’t need every square mile for ourselves. Plus, there are benefits to preserving species, some that we can’t quantify at all because we just don’t know how useful we might find them in the future (for medicine, etc). Once they’re gone, we’ll never really be able to get them back. Captivity isn’t a solution for a lot of animals, since they’ll just die out slower in captivity, and cloning is a pie in the sky solution.
Still, we need to reform the EPA or trash it and let the states handle it, since they are not practicing reasonable conservation, but just pushing a leftist anti-capitalist agenda.
I disagree, captivity has enabled species such as the Giant Panda to survive and besides, species die out regularly. The fact is, the EPA has no business creating regulations (laws) as it not a constitutionally mandated organization. If we had to preserve every species to find out if they might be useful for medicine there would be no room for humans at all. If we want to protect species we should take them into custody rather than ceding the earth to them and penning in people and destroying our economy.