Walking after God: Noah and the animals

We've seen before how the ancient Israelites understood their duty to walk after God as a duty to imitate his good acts. They demonstrated a duty to visit the sick from God visiting Abraham after his circumcision; they demonstrated a duty to comfort the mourners from his blessing Isaac at the time of Abraham's death.

From the same line of reasoning, we could deduce an obligation to preserve all species of animals:

As the Almighty preserved every kind of animal on the ark, so do we also preserve every kind of animal.

I'm not here entering into the debate over whether certain animals were entered on modern "endangered" lists because of true preservation needs or merely in order to prevent construction. I'm saying that, regardless of the debate over whether any particular regulation was necessary for any particular species, based on the story of Noah and the ark we can still deduce that it is our duty to work with God to preserve all species.