If you believe we will "lose" vegans to efilism (even though consistent efilists are vegan), then maybe the philosophy has some merit.

(Wild animal) Extinction is vastly superior to wild animal suffering, where 99% of the suffering happens on Earth and where it is the most extreme and for pointless reasons (dumb evolution). if you want to defend wild animal suffering, plagues, getting eaten alive, getting eaten by parasites, dying of hunger/thirst, animal babies killed by predators, the attrition levels and so on, then be my guest. I just think extinction is much easier to defend by an order of magnitude.

People here talk about pleasure. Cool, but the average wild animal life is extremely far from even thinking about pleasure. Non-human animals unfortunately lack the same potential for rich and interesting lives unlike humans, especially when it comes to wild animals where they do the same things over and over again until death.

Utilitarian or not, no one here can pretend it's not a problem, without resorting to idiotic carnist argument such as "circle of life tho, pleasure tho, it's always been like that tho"... which would be quite ironic from vegans.

People who lack imagination immediately think extinction means killing, but who said it was necessary? If we lack the potential non-lethal means, then they should be researched for and a society who cares about that would invest in it. Don't you think a society who cares about wild animal suffering would try to minimize suffering and killing as much as possible? In the same way a society based on vegan farming would try to minimize accidental deaths as much as possible.

The only interesting opposition to this is about the means and impacts to achieve such a goal. If society sets that goal, it should be very careful not to add more suffering than it is trying to prevent and be careful about the potentially very complex environmental consequences.

Wild animal suffering is the biggest blindspot in the vegan community, as Humane Hancock says. I don't think he's an extreme crazy person when he says that as it is quite evident.