The natural selection is an important thing. When an animal is lost with in their order the whole system has been lost. That is the idea in the article Think Like a Mountain by Aldo Leopold.
In this article Leopold begins by talking about how every living and dead thing knows the howl of a wolf and what it meant to them. For a coyote it's a promise of leftover meat soon to come, for a hunter it's a challenge of bullet against fang. Later on he describes how when he saw the wolf he killed die, he saw the the fire in her eyes fade. He then realized that for each wolf he killed, he was also destroying the mountain. The wolves help keep the deer population under control, too many deer means that the the sides of the mountains are slowly picked clean of vegetation leaving it vulnerable to erosion. Not only do wolves protect the mountain, they also protect the fields. When they kill and eat cows they are controlling how many cows deplete the ground of its dirt-holding-grass, taking out the excess cows helps prevent dust bowls.
To me this reminds me not to think only as a human and how animals harm us but to also think as an animal and how a human harms our natural system of selection.
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