There isn't enough money, time and enthusiasm to save every living thing and every natural area. Some, the Preterites, must be allowed to go. This Preterite life, however, deserves something more than a lament. Funding gene banks is a particularly sound scientific investment. A similar argument can be made for the substantial expansion of museum facilities.
Museums are the natural habitat of the extinct.
Properly curated collections should be growing in step with species losses. Optimists believe that Elect species and natural areas will survive the biodiversity-loss crisis. Pessimists aren't so sure, but they still favour Election. Both groups are afraid that in a biotically-impoverished world, the Elect will be the only Nature left for biologists to study. It is in such a world that the Preterites would have their greatest scientific value.