When natural habit is destroyed by human development, it is not replaced by something "better". It is replaced by something different, which benefits some speci

When natural habit is destroyed by human development, it is not replaced by something "better". It is replaced by something different, which benefits some species over others (mainly humans). Coastlines and wetlands are never "moved", they're simply destroyed. The life that was there dies and species go extinct, one after the other. Sure, it's possible for people to create new and better habitat for endangered species. The problem is that we usually don't. The "make more land" article doesn't even offer that as a suggested environmental offset. I imagine that the cost of doing so in a way that would actually be beneficial to the environment would nullify any gains to the developers. I agree that coastlines aren't fragile on geologic time scales. The living things which depend on them are. There are millions of species that we haven't even cataloged, so how many are going extinct because of human development? We'll never know.