Survival of the species, specifically, is quite abstract, both in its definitions and motivations.
I have a direct relationship with the world and its inhabitants today, and it's easy to extend that to a concern for the well-being of people even several generations from now. And humanity reaching great heights in the distant future is a nice daydreaming subject.
But the indefinite survival of the species... where does the personal investment originate to care that humanity never ends? And how far are you willing to extend your definition of humanity before that investment no longer holds? Is it strictly our DNA? Is that all we care about? Or are there elements of the human experience that we want to preserve? And could going to extremes in the name of surivival undermine that? Does a continuity to development of humanity's sense of heritage and history and cultural evolution matter? Or is it all well and good if we fire off a seed pod to some distant earth-like planet, so that human beings with zero knowledge of where they came from live there? Just so we can feel safe in the knowledge that if earth gets wiped out, at least there will be living beings somewhere else with human DNA in them?
Yeah, it's a pretty abstract imperative to me.