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Because it is the most straightforward and unequivocal explanation I've come across recently, I'm inclined to offer up an excerpt from the book The Treeline: The Last Forest and the Future of Life on Earth by Ben Rawlence.

“It seems strange that trees should evoke such extreme reactions, but Glen Feshie [a private Scottish rewilding project] poses a fundamental question about land. Without sporting income or productive value as forestry or for commercial agriculture—without the prospect of a financial return—what is land actually for? The simple answer is life. We need land to grow food, but we also need to set aside enough wild land to produce the oxygen and the biodiversity that we require to survive. There is enough land to feed everyone if it is distributed and managed properly and if issues of lifestyle, of consumption, of values, of equity and justice, of the disconnect between livelihoods and the living world are addressed. If there is not enough diversity and abundance in the living world, then there is no life, human or non-human, at all.�

We're but another life form in evolution's varying iterations, with similar behavioral aspects. One of those behavioral aspects is self-interest, which in essence is simply an inherent survival drive. Problems arise, though, when any life form is prolific enough to eclipse a substantial number of other life forms, causing ecological imbalance which spurs accelerated extinctions and evolution.

The question is then, with all the evolutionary baggage we carry, does humanity posses the wherewithal for a critical mass to recognize our missteps and act responsibly in our closed loop little blue canoe?

Excerpt from the postamble of Togwotee Passage by L. G. Cullens:

"Sashaying in the streets of Pompeii,
our steadfast way naïve to natural sway.
Oil and water seething at every crossway.

Nature oblivious to right or wrong,
adapting life forms in moving on.

Oil and water."

In closing:

"The value of wilderness and biodiversity boils down to a question of intellectual humility. While the self-absorbed prate of political and economic empires, the natural history student sees successive excursions searching for a durable quality of life, only to fail time and again. Each failure the result of not realizing our potential is a matter of aligning our interests with the overriding scheme of the connectedness of all life."
~ paraphrased from Aldo Leopold

Thank you! All aspects of life need respect.