I'll take the Zhou Enlai 'It's too early to tell.' response. Much earlier in this thread, around the place of your post, there was the example of climate change and dying reefs. The proscience position related to that example is 'how do we know about this? science'. A counter could be that science led to technology that causes global warming and possibly we are incapable of making the changes to undo this. One could disagree on this in a number of ways, but likely most people would acknowledge that the jury is still out about both the consequences of priortizing the scientific methodology and of what humans do with science.

They all have spirit and conscoiusness. I am not sure why, now, the criterion is love. Relationships are complicated in most belief systems including animism. This of the way places can be sacred to indigenous peoples, to the point where they feel dead if the relationship is lost, for example. The point is that they consider everything alive and relatable to. And the hierachies are not simple. I think most indigenous groups while respectufl to classes of animals, would tend not to value any individual animals as much as places that they identify with. And even classes of animals can be less important. Humans are very important, sure, but then kinship, tribe, and other culture category factors can certainly put many humans lower than places and what we would call things and animals.

I don't think its a good idea, in general, to think animists consider animals gods, let alone Gods or God-like. They are generally nothing like the monotheist God, in any case, which is what we generally capitalize. They are, in fact, often referred to as humans or people or spirits (as are humans) by animists. This was an earlier part of the discussion I was entering.

I think animism actually regards animals as the highest expression of mother nature and holds them as God-like, hence the connections with environmental concerns — Gregory

Animism comes from latin soul/life, as in other words like animated. It doesn't come from animal. Animal also comes from that root. IOW all these things are alive and are animated by something like a spirit. Rocks, rivers, beavers, humans, sometimes the Sun.......

t I'll just second Mad Fool's sense that animism is broader than relationships to animals - places, storms, spirits, mountains, streams are all related to, as examples, in a wide variety of ways by animists. And it is likely much easier in a practical sense to have a relationship with a stone than with a bear. But since animists have all sorts of relations with all sorts of creatures and beings, then the word relationship is an extremely broad term. There is a sense in which all these beings have consciousness, intentions, emotions, thoughts, and so on. Which, interestingly, they were certainly correct about regarding animals, long before science managed to, with incredible internal resistance, acknowleldge this.

There may be people who condemn or disapprove of killing bugs, like many Buddhists, say, but some of these or many would disapprove of killing fish. Or at least of killing fish for no reason. So, I don't really know who you are talking about. I have seen thousands of mosquitoes swatted without negative judgment from witnesses. I see flypaper sold, bug sprays, industrial pestacides. Seriously, what are you talking about?

And there are people who condemn fishing: certainly many vegans and some activists.

I think the OP needs to focus on whatever (tiny, I think) group approves of one and disapproves of the other. In general there is more condemnation of the killing of organisms like us than those less like use. Fish being bigger and more intelligent tend to get more sympathy than insects. Though many have no problem with people killing either. I think many people would disapprove of killing either for pur enjoyment. Running over to an anthill and stomping on it or throwing dynamite into a stream and killing all fish in one area would like get a lot of disapproval both.