Ecosystems are biotic communities, kept in dynamic evolution over time by selection pressures toward an optimally satisfactory fit for each species. Each species defends only its own kind, but the ecosystem coordinates kinds, through a spontaneously evolving order that arises when many such species interact. That order exceeds in richness, beauty and dynamic stability the order of any of the component parts. Bioexuberance, both diversity and complexity, is conserved while it is increased. Ecosystems are the context of speciation.
Species are what they are where they are.
The comprehensive ecosystem too is a vital survival unity. But when human culture supplants nature, extinction is radically different. Natural extinction is the key to the future because in nature, a species dies when it has become unfit in its habitats, and other species appear in its place. Artificial extinction closes off the future because it shuts down speciation. One can say that nature doesn't care about species, and in a way that is true.