An argument about empathy isn't particularly powerful, unless the receiver already shares your intuitions. It appeals to people who already agree with you. We

An argument about empathy isn't particularly powerful, unless the receiver already shares your intuitions. It appeals to people who already agree with you. We don't want to lose bio-diversity. We don't have a way to un-extinct a species yet, so we need to be very careful until there's an undo button. Eagles play an important role in their ecosystem, and it would be bad for us if they went extinct. We also don't want people to be attacked by animals, especially when they would be skirting legal trouble for reasonably defending themselves against those animals. An individual human does more for you and I than an individual eagle, and the value judgement there is quite clear. There's an optimal amount of eagles, taking into account all the concerns about ecosystem health, and the well being of people. For this particular species of eagle, at this particular point in time, we are probably wrong in the direction of too-many-eagles, than in the direction of too-few-eagles.