Hmm… while I don’t necessarily see biodiversity as an end in itself, I do see it (or more specifically, the ability of ecosystems to produce new diversity going forward) as a critical part of maintaining the long-term viability of the biosphere in the face of mass extinctions and local ecosystem collapses. (And I don’t think that viability is a given—life has been lucky in the past, but that doesn’t mean our actions now have no effect on the odds going forward.)

Now, maybe (hopefully) there are other ways of maintaining the resiliency of the biosphere that are less cruel than predation (or disease, or resource exhaustion, etc.). But we need to understand the existing mechanisms before we can discover any potential better alternatives.

And maybe we humans can’t or won’t do that. But if nothing else, increasing future biodiversity increases the chance that some other species or ecosystem will eventually hit on a better dynamic than what the world has had to work with so far.