It is question asked by the soup thrown at paintings in museums recently. Like saying "Why do you consider that paintings must be protected and not the possibility to keep living on this planet ?" At least it is how I interpret it.

It is about rules elaborated by an educated society. Not perfect rules, but at least rules that preserve what this society consider "important". Many example show that humans that live in a given place are very well aware of how important is a "healthy" ecosystem and give rights to "a good life" to this ecosystem: Wanganui river in New-Zeland, lac Erie in US (this attempt failed), constitution of Ecuador, etc... Elinor Ostrom wrote interesting about this rules (governing the commons), she had the nobel prize for that.

Is not more important, but we can preserve both at the same time.

And those gluing this hands to valuable old master paintings are still imbecile puppets, no matter the alleged reason to do it in their minds.