Look, I live in California. I know damn well that "threatened species" are a political weapon, used to prevent development, prevent building highways, prevent logging, dambuilding, or prevent pretty much any human activity the environmentalists don't like. There are legal specialists whose job it is to invoke a "threatened species" pretty much anywhere one is needed, and guess what: there practically isn't a damn place on Earth you can't find SOMETHING that they think should be there in greater numbers than they are.

There isn't any rational way someone can come up and declare that 30,000 species a year are vanishing based on nothing but statistics, guesses, and bizarre assumptions about how organisms respond when the environment is stressed. This is especially true if the criteria for being labeled "extinct" is a rigorous one.

There are plenty of real environmental problems out there. The Australian Barrier reef. Commerical fisheries. A lot of others. Constructing them out of statistical assumptions is not called for.