When will we learn...

I'm sad that we lost the dodo.

I think the tendency in favour of megafauna is understandable, as I think (but I'm not a biologist, so tell me off if not true) unless it's human it tends to be more vulnerable to extinction (smaller number of individuals and so forth).

Lots of easy things everyone can do (waste less, drive less, fly less, go vegan, sort out the house, etc.) but ultimately the responsibility must lie with governments--what individuals can do is all very fine, and important in its own right, but the big picture is still (for how much longer?) controlled by governments.

I'm no biologist either but I think that this argument doesn't really work as a lot of the less photogenic and equally endangered microfauna depend on very specific and minuscule habitats in which to survive (weird underground cave systems, deepsea vents, or the intestines of equally endangered mega-fauna). This is obviously also true of both the dodo and of the above bird, but animals like the panda and so on, less so I think.

If it's a question of biodiversity, then the parasites that live on and in the black rhino, for instance, represent a far greater aggregate loss than the rhino itself. Perhaps.