I know a professional wildlife photographer who does very well thank you very much, and he shoots in jpeg. On the other hand, another photographer shoots in raw. Horses for courses...
My personal opinion, is that (and I'll probably get shot down for this!), it is better to have taken a good photograph to start off with, needing just a little touching up (i.e. unsharp - especially with Canon, and possible levels), than to have taken a crap photo and spend endless hours on the computer trying to make it look good.
As someone mentioned, fps is quite important, more so if shooting action images with a fast moving subject (birds, F1, etc). However, I suppose if you are taking a shot of a castle or what have you, then fps isn't high on the priority list.