Karohemd's World

This. Selection 'pressure' in an environment where you have few to no natural predators is weak, and in the interests of energy conservation the species that doesn't over-breed and wind up running out of food would do well. Until human settlers began causing drastic alterations in their habitat, they were doing just fine. They are a fragile species and they cannot handle the human invasion of their habitats. It's quite likely that they would have come to an end at some point in the future even without human intervention, as 99.9% of all species that ever lived have done, but in this case they've been cut short by humanity as many other species have been.

I think it's quite unfair to single out which species to conserve and which ones not to bother with becasue of how useful they are to us at present, or how cute they look. To say that a species of animal 'deserves' to be wiped out by humanity's actions becasue it wasn't good enough to adapt to our blink-of-an-eye colonisation of the planet is arrogant beyond belief. As a species, we have an attrocious sense of responsibility.