I do think of those. What makes it difficult is knowing that in many ways, caring is a privilege. I can care about moas because I live in a civilization where we have intensive agriculture producing ample food. (Of course, that comes with its own issues such as extensive habitat loss.) How can I judge the ancestral Maori when I have never lived under the conditions they did? And yet I do often feel judgmental; judgemental that, as you said, people didn’t care. “Moa” is the Polynesian word for chicken; these creatures that to us are magnificent wildlife, to them were just big, tasty chickens.
Not to me it isn’t. I understand. Without physical specimens, it can be hard to prove that there ever were such creatures. Thinking of the lost macaws of the Caribbean, the existence of the Cuban macaw is undisputed because there are existing museum skins; all the others have their doubters and critics because we have only descriptions and illustrations without specimens. I would much rather see these animals alive; but given that extinction is irreversible, seeing their preserved bodies, thus knowing for certain they once lived, is better than having no hard evidence.