When one species is threatened with extinction, whole ecosystems as well as other species are deeply affected. We might hold the notion that this cannot really affect us individually, that we are some how not a part of all this. But the truth is, we simply cannot interfere with nature without dire consequences to all life - including human.
Each species indirectly protects many other species within any given ecosystem, or ecological community. It is similar to a human community, which provides for the protection and survival of the people within its habitat. Everyone must do his or her part. They all have a vital role to play. There is a giving and receiving. It is the same for every other species and every habitat.
But we must also reach out beyond these narrow boundaries to interrelate to the whole. The sustenance we need to survive critically depends upon the well-being and health of other species and their habitats. It requires always a giving and receiving; for humans this means acquiring a gentle respect and understanding for all life, and a caring for the earth.
In the natural order of things, a harmonious balance already exists between all living species - human, animal, marine life, and plant life. But the human race has broken this sacred chain of life. Humanity is the only species that lives almost wholly through its thinking mind, to the detriment of the heart. We have been given a great gift - the gift of conscious awareness, the ability to step outside ourselves and to witness our self. It is now time for us to take up the responsibility that goes with that gift.
We are all interconnected, but we humans do not see it; we have lost the memory of how to see. We no longer know how to connect ourselves to the whole, or what it means to live in tune to the rhythm and harmony of all things; or what it means to function more from the heart as well as the mind.
There are many efforts underway to protect endangered species, and conservation planning efforts to protect and restore lost habitats, such as the World Wild Life Fund and the Conservation Planning Institute. But it is a universal change of consciousness that is needed now for the survival of this planet. And this can only happen through human beings.