"Artifact" of Environmental Ethics

This article describes the responsibilities of humans, as 'higher' mammals, toward the natural world. Since we are the only species capable of reasoning and organizing on a massive scale, we are responsible for the ultimate well-being of the resources form which we draw value.  To sum it up: "Only the human species contains moral agents, but perhaps conscience on such an Earth ought not be used to exempt every other form of life from consideration, with the resulting paradox that the sole moral species acts only in its collective self-interest toward all the rest. Is not the ultimate philosophical task the discovery of a whole great ethic that knows the human place under the sun?"
 http://www.ecospherics.net/pages/RolstonEnvEth.html