Tom Regan on Wild Animals

With regard to wild animals, the general policy recommended by the rights view is: let them be! Since this will require increased human intervention in human practices that threaten rare or endangered species (e.g., halting the destruction of natural habitat and closer surveillance of poaching, with much stiffer fines and longer prison sentences), the rights view sanctions this intervention, assuming that those humans involved are treated with the respect they are due. Too little is not enough.

(Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, updated with a new preface [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2004], 361 [italics in original] [first edition published in 1983])