I'm pretty sure virtue ethics is as practical as you can get and still stay in the realm of philosophy.
Virtue ethics is there to give you guidance of which questions to pose and how to act when coming up with the answers.
There's no need to delve on the metaethics of a particular case.
Even if one, for the most part, cares for the world around them, is it virtuous to attempt to ensure the survival of a species like the panda? As a species it would vanish without any outside intervention.
I think the only obvious route is to treat other living things the way we would like to be treated - after all, we have a common ancestry and a case could be made that we're just one big multicellular organism
The reason I consider humans the most competitive is because we could potentially wipe out any form of life (for some, we would have to go too). As for the special thing, I don't think we're special in the sense that we have some innate quality that separates us from other animals, we're just more intelligent. Some unknown gap between the smartest animals and us results in the situation we see today: humans have created technology and industry, pursued math and science. No other species has, as far as I know (or at least not to a degree that makes it significant relative to human understanding)
> That's why stuff needs rethinking and regulation.
I assume the regulation will be done by the angels, as people do not behave as virtuous agents.
For your subjective idea of virtue.
It's the pragmatist philosophy.
Nihilism isn't the ultimate end.
I'd say that if you can choose between eating a fruit, and killing a bird and eating it's flesh, a virtuous agent would eat the fruit.
It's unnecessary to go the utilitarian way of trying to draw the lines and meet every single exception to the rule.
Acting in the world as a virtuous agent is a much more practical approach.
Would you test and experiment on someone who has a nervous system capable of feeling pain and suffering, if it could save thousands or even millions of people? Given the data of the lack of success of a huge percentage of studies, you would, being virtuous, deduce that it's better to seek other means of testing instead of doing a hit and miss approach on animals.
People don't behave as virtuous agents, and they do not act kindly. Especially not to those they deem less worthy than them.
That's why stuff needs rethinking and regulation.