My purpose here is not to belittle the efforts of those who champion individual animals. The strength of any movement is diversity, including diversity of strategies and tactics. Conservationists, animal welfare activists, and animal rights advocates have many objectives in common. At the same time, there must be tolerance of other opinions and understanding of the importance of agreeing to disagree. Animal welfare is humanity in action.
Animal rights is the philosophic attempt to better that humanity.
Conservation is simply survival, and thus the foundation of our collective concerns. To address the issues of animal welfare and animal rights while ignoring the foundation of conservation is to collapse the structure of all. There should be concern for individual animals, and I am not saying that animals with names should be ignored. However, it is imperative that the interests of species receive priority attention. Once a species is gone, it is gone forever, and with the species gone, there will be no individuals left to be named.