It's indefensible unless you believe that whatever Big Oil wants, Big Oil gets. In order to do this, certain landscapes need to be protected. It includes species and genetic variation within a species. Biodiversity is a result of the interaction of species with their environment. In order to conserve biodiversity, not only do you have to conserve species, you also have to conserve habitat and the environment in which they exist.
Roads break up wildlife areas.
Yet roads would be built on those protected public lands where there is oil or gas drilling and a field developed. Newmark notes that roads frequently provide corridors for the introduction of exotic, invasive plant species to an area, which then become established. Roads have other problems attached to them. Newmark points out that most poaching is done in close vicinity to roads. We have it in our power to decide the fate of the majority of the other species on the planet.