TODAY, SPECIES EXTINCTION has become an ethical issue around which thousands of people around the world have rallied. But as people demand more and more from the earth, species are forced into steadily shrinking corners of the globe.

For centuries, a species was only protected when it provided an important food source for people. This was the reason that colonial Newport, Rhode Island, passed a law in 1639 restricting deer hunting, to allow more individuals to reproduce. The idea of saving all species, in order to shield them from extinction, was not considered.

A history of extermination

Usually, it was extermination, not salvation, that people had in mind for a particular species. The wolf, for example, was deliberately hunted to near-extinction in North America. Because wolves had a reputation as fearsome, vicious killers that would attack without mercy or warning, humans...