Most can't speak, but animals can certainly feel pleasure and pain, and some have even shown amazing abilities to reason, communicate, and help humans. Many believe we have a moral duty to protect animals, and the extinction of species is worrying on many levels.
Listing the polar bear as a threatened species is an affront to Arctic indigenous peoples' traditional way of life and won't act as a lever to force federal action on climate change, say Alaska's Iñupiat people.