the 'me' paradox

The population of Tigers in India has been dwindling very rapidly over the past few years. There are appriximately 1300 tigers in India right now. In 2009 alone, 72 tigers died according to the Wildlife Protection Society of India (WPSI), an NGO; and 54 died according to National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA), a government body, which is meant for conservation and is hence conservative!

I often wonder whether we are right or wrong in dominating the earth the way we do, and in screwing the lives of most other animals of sizes comparable to ours. As we are also animals, and part of the same nature, perhaps we are also a force operating in taking the nature to a different configuration or a stage of evolution. As we gradually end most animals our size, through reluctant selfishness inspite of attempts (that are even more reluctant and compromised in their seriousness) to save these endangered animals from us, the earth is gradually moving to a place majorly inhabited by smaller species. At the micro level, they have been beyond our control and imagination anyways. And it is natural for us to want to be all powerful and dominating, if we can, in the ranges in which we thrive. So we ruthlessly cage animals, kill them, fake wanting to save them. May be we don't fake. It's genuine. But the rationale behind it is probably still selfish - perhaps many of us fear the death of these animals may somehow lead to our own death. Why? May be because - (a)we don't think we are responsible for their death. So somehow their dying signals to us that something's wrong and we might also die because of it; or (b)we know that we are responsible for their death, and it scares us big time that we committed a sin of ending life, of which we are also a kind. I am not sure what's the actual reason. May be it's a mix of both. May be it's something else. It's weird, we are not sure what goes on inside our minds when we do things, and what really makes us do them. The brain, if at all it takes all decisions, has various ways of doing that, some of which it does not reveal to the part of the brain which 'we' seem to be conscious of (are 'we' not our brains? minds?), the thoughts, beliefs, etc. that we are aware of. It's fairly complicated how something that is helping 'me' think ('me' is again defined by that something itself) hides a part of itself from that something, which it can't, so may be it hides itself from 'me', which it seems to me is that something itself. It's terribly complicated. God must be crazy!