I don't know about liberal 'lies' but the opening example from the cited article, discussing the 'Okapi' is completely mistaken. In 1990 I came across an okapi wildlife refuge, run by some American zoologists deep in the Ituri forest of eastern Zaire - now the Congo. I saw a couple of the beasts myself and was told just how extremely rare they were and this was a project to try to acclimatize captured examples for zoo living so the species might be preserved outside of the wild - they were gradually being conditioned to smaller enclosures, in the forest setting.
In a bizarre twist a couple of nights later I was in a small village drinking what I was told was pombe, local beer but was in fact some much stronger distillate and chatting up the fellows on the benches around me - who were naturally curious about the white traveller in their midst. At some point I asked them what they liked to eat and one of them answered 'okapi', I thought this was quite funny but in truth, I wasn't sure the guy was joking.
As for whether the geometric expansion of human settlement and environmental impact has had a negative impact on other species, re: the OP: Whether or not you accept the more 'out there', speculative guesstimates on species extinction, its a no-brainer. We humans hunt shit to extinction, and have done for thousands of years. We managed it on continental North America 10,000 years ago when our populations and environmental footprint were a fraction of what they are now.
Who the fuck sez different and how can you support it beyond some piece of news fluff?