Well, hybridization is certainly not a new theory -- as the article mentions, many plants hybridize quite readily, and the existence of "ring species" just goes

Well, hybridization is certainly not a new theory -- as the article mentions, many plants hybridize quite readily, and the existence of "ring species" just goes to show how fuzzy the biological species concept is. The proper way to think about species is that they are hypotheses to be tested, and evidence can variously favor merging or splitting species. In the case of conservation, there are political reasons for defining species. The laws either have no provision for protecting populations below the species level, or otherwise there's no political will to attempt to do so. Therefore conservation biologists will often try to keep species "distinct" in order to keep what would normally be termed a "population" or "subspecies" under protection. (You might ask why bother protecting populations or subspecies when the larger species is fine -- oftentimes there are suspected local adaptations that would be wiped out by letting that population go extinct or hybridize with other populations.)