For some reason it's seen by the site's owner as very desirable to have restrictions on all activities, to keep people from using them a lot. So to keep you from doing too much janitorial work there are captchas that get in your way. I don't know why it is assumed to be good for the site if cleanup actions are made tedious and frustrating.
Having 10k reputation reduces the captcha time limits to a level where you don't hit them all that often.