The philosopher of Concord hunkered down on the African veldt extracting antelope bone marrow with a stick, his chin running with blood. More likely to find him daubing his lips with linen in Emerson's dining room. Thoreau wouldn't have survived a week, alone, without the accouterments of civilization, in, say, the Okefenokee or the Everglades. This conflicted nonsense from Thoreau rubs off on many present-day conservationists. Of course, in the real wild world, the lion has the lamb for dinner, and the rivers are bloody arenas of eat or be eaten.
Selfishness is built into creation from the genes up.
That's the Thoreauvian romantic speaking. There is much to be admired about the Native American environmental ethic, but there are few of us of any cultural background who prefer raw bone marrow to the taste of a Big Mac. Human technological domination of this planet is the bottom line where every conservation ethic must begin. The untrod wilderness is finished, kaput. Whatever happens for good or bad in the forest, mountains, desert or sea will happen by human design.