Don't worry, the market corrects - what's the market price on Galapagos turtle soup or dodo omelettes?
Others are right - the matter is neither created nor destroyed, but you are also right, that form is/was unique, and it is at least a bit sad to know that it's unlikely to be seen again. Take from that what you will, but I take from it that the world will only be like this for a moment, and if I want to see it, the only way to encourage that is to go and see it, not hope that society will realize it needs to (or wished it had) preserve things.
Whether these are the things we'll regret losing - different question, but I'm sure a british museum will hang onto one :)
This comment is all over the place. Is the market for marble good or bad in this case? Is it producing an efficient outcome? Can it be made to do so? What are the non market solutions? You fault something just because it exist but give no alternative.
Species like Dodo are expected to go extinct as humans flourish and move other things out of our way. All species eventually go extinct. We only exist because we out competed what came before us, which out competed what came before it.
You can mourn the loss of the Dodo not existing in a zoo for you to gawk at but I find that to be on the level of complaining about a TV show being cancelled. If it filled such an essential biological niche that its loss is noticed (it obviously wasn't - hundreds of years went by before anyone noticed it was gone) - if it were noticed, and was such a heavy loss, that's the first niche that will be filled by something else. You can't have Darwinian evolution without this.
The Galapagos Giant Tortoise will never go extinct because the market for protecting and investigating and gawking at them is too strong. If that interest ever wanes the animal will no longer occupy a useful niche and will cease to exist, unless it adapts.
Do you have a blog? If you do, please drop a link. If not, you should. You just put the thoughts that I had about this comment into writing more eloquently than I ever could.
Others are right - the matter is neither created nor destroyed, but you are also right, that form is/was unique, and it is at least a bit sad to know that it's unlikely to be seen again. Take from that what you will, but I take from it that the world will only be like this for a moment, and if I want to see it, the only way to encourage that is to go and see it, not hope that society will realize it needs to (or wished it had) preserve things.
Whether these are the things we'll regret losing - different question, but I'm sure a british museum will hang onto one :)