If I'm understanding his position correctly, the society which values these species should offer to buy the land, buy enough specimens to relocate them, pay the landowner to change his destructive ways, or some other voluntary alternative.
This already is happening in big ways. The Nature Conservancy is buying up huge areas of rain forest where it can, but it can't do it fast enough, and before you declare that you understand or don't understand the significance of "fast enough", be prepared to research the magnitude of the problem. The first thing you need to understand is the importance of preserving ecosystems for our own continued existence on this planet. Then you need to understand the extinction rate acceleration that is occurring. Over the past 450 million years or so, the average extinction rate has been one species per million per year. Currently, almost entirely due to man, the extinction rate is 1,000 to 10,000 species per million per year. That's 0.1 to 1 percent per year. Do the math.
Other philanthropists buying up land are Yvon Chouinard and Doug Thompkins, owners of Patagonia, Inc. and The North Face.
Regarding buying specimens to relocate - this contributes to the problem. Not the idea, but the fact that there are people like you who think this will work. Species are part of their ecosystem. It's not so easy to just relocate them. And this brings me to the spotted owl. Perhaps you've heard of the spotted owl and the controversy between the ESA and the logging companies? What's that controversy about, anyway? I'll explain. Protection of the spotted owl is not about saving the spotted owl - it's about that and a whole lot more. You see, by saving the spotted owl, which has been identified as an umbrella species, what's really happening is setting in motion the necessary rules to save the very important and last remaining old growth forests in the country, because the spotted owl cannot survive anywhere else. They can live in secondary growth forests, but cannot resist going extinct unless the old growth forests are saved. And by saving the old growth forests, whole ecosystems which hundreds, perhaps many thousands of species depend on can also survive. So the spotted owl provides the umbrella to the whole region.
This is kinda like the "wanting MORE pollution" thing; stopping at nothing to save all species may have worse consequences than letting some die.
Short term, there may be some negative consequences. But on balance, generally both in the short term, and the long term, the benefits far outweigh the negative effects. And what is required, before speculating too much on these matters, is to really understand the ramifications of what you're saying.
I challenge you to enumerate all the benefits of preserving biodiversity and ecosystems off the top of your head. But I also encourage you to make an earnest attempt to research the matter enough so that if you can't name those benefits off the top of your head, you will be able to after researching the matter.
Here are some particular things you might want to become familiar with:
The Great Amphibian Dying: amphibian extinctions are considered to be early indicators of bad things to come. Why? They spend their adolescent years in the water, and their adult years in the soil, typically in forests. They breathe through their skin. This means they're susceptible to toxins in the water, toxins in the soil, pollutants in the atmosphere, and deforestation. In other words, they're more vulnerable than most species, and thus a sort of early warning indicator of the Earth's natural systems going bad. Do you care to speculate why there were massive amphibian extinctions on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada but not on the east side? I can spell it out for you if you can't figure it out yourself.
The Sumatran rhino: here's a classic example of exploitation and collateral damage to satisfy free markets. Furthermore, it's an example of increased rarity contributing to an accelerated harvesting of these creatures.
The Blue whale: there used to be hundreds of thousands of blue whales. In 1930-31, 29,400 were hunted in the Antarctic alone. They nearly went extinct (down to a few hundred), but due to regulations enacted, they are recovering, and now number in the thousands, but less than 10,000.
Learn about trophic cascades caused by predators, and how these cascades are responsible for important things you might take for granted, like water quality, via natural regulation of riparian zones. As mentioned earlier, learn about umbrella species, and keystone species, and what their significance is.
Learn about how future technology can both aid in development of new technologies through the study of species that we haven't yet fully studied. It would be a shame to lose all those species, and instead find ourselves on a desolate desert world devoid of a wealth of information embedded in the ecosystems we destroyed.
You might want to learn about ecosystem fragmentation, and edge effects as well.
You might want to educate yourself on deep sea fishing, and what the limiting factors are which determine the annual global fish haul, and how those limiting factors have changed over the past several hundred years.
Perhaps you might want to take the time to learn about wildlife corridors, and what their importance is.
And of course, become familiar with the overkill hypothesis. The areas of of interest would be New Zealand, Australia, the Pacific Islands, North America, South America, and Europe. Ever wonder why all the megafauna extinctions on all those land masses coincided exactly with the appearance of man? Ever wonder why we have so few large animals on all those continents? Ever wonder why we do have large animals (megafauna) in Africa?
I could go on here. Do you need some book recommendations?
