Conservationists Say 'De-Extinction' Not the Answer to Saving Extinct Species (chicagotribune.com) 36
There was excitement when biotech company Collosal announced genetically modified grey wolves (first hailed as a "de-extinction" of the Dire wolf species after several millennia). "But bioethicists and conservationists are expressing unease with the kind of scientific research," writes the Chicago Tribune. [Alternate URL here.]
"Unfortunately, as clever as this science is ... it's can-do science and not should-do science," said Lindsay Marshall, director of science in animal research at Humane World for Animals, formerly the Humane Society of the U.S.... Ed Heist, a professor at Southern Illinois University and a conservation geneticist, said the news bothered him. "This is not conservation, but people conflate it," he said. "The point is entertainment...."
Naomi Louchouarn [program director of wildlife partnerships at Humane World for Animals], has dedicated her studies and research to the relationship between humans and animals, specifically carnivores like gray wolves. "The reason our current endangered species are becoming extinct is because we don't know how to coexist with them," she said. "And this doesn't solve that problem at all." Humans can treat the symptoms of wildlife conflict with "big, flashy silver bullets" and "in this case, advanced, inefficient science," she said, but the real solution is behavioral change. "Assuming that we could actually bring back a full population of animals," Louchouarn said, "which is so difficult and so crazy — that's a big if — I don't understand the point of trying to bring back a woolly mammoth when we already can't coexist with elephants."
The article notes that even Colossal's chief science officer says their technology is at best one of several tools for fighting biodiversity loss, calling it a battle which humans are 'not close to winning'... We as a global community need to continue to invest in traditional approaches to conservation and habitat preservation, as well as in the protection of living endangered species."
But the article adds that the Trump administration "is citing the case of the dire wolf as it moves to reduce federal protections under the Endangered Species Act of 1973." (Wednesday U.S. interior secretary Doug Burgum has even posted on X "The concept of 'de-extinction' can serve as a bedrock for modern species conservation.")
And the article adds that "During a livestreamed town hall with Interior Department employees on April 9, Burgum said: "If we're going to be in anguish about losing a species, now we have an opportunity to bring them back. Pick your favorite species and call up Colossal. Ken Angielczyk, curator of mammal fossils at the Field Museum who researches extinct species that lived 200 to 300 million years ago, said it's a misguided approach. "If that's the basis ... for changing regulations related to the endangered species list, that is very, very premature," he said. "Because we can't resurrect things.... If the purpose is to restore the damage to the shared ecosystem, we have that opportunity right now," she said. "And that's the necessity immediately...."
"This whole idea that extinction is reversible is so dangerous," Marshall said, "because then it stops us caring."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader walterbyrd for sharing the news.
Naomi Louchouarn [program director of wildlife partnerships at Humane World for Animals], has dedicated her studies and research to the relationship between humans and animals, specifically carnivores like gray wolves. "The reason our current endangered species are becoming extinct is because we don't know how to coexist with them," she said. "And this doesn't solve that problem at all." Humans can treat the symptoms of wildlife conflict with "big, flashy silver bullets" and "in this case, advanced, inefficient science," she said, but the real solution is behavioral change. "Assuming that we could actually bring back a full population of animals," Louchouarn said, "which is so difficult and so crazy — that's a big if — I don't understand the point of trying to bring back a woolly mammoth when we already can't coexist with elephants."
The article notes that even Colossal's chief science officer says their technology is at best one of several tools for fighting biodiversity loss, calling it a battle which humans are 'not close to winning'... We as a global community need to continue to invest in traditional approaches to conservation and habitat preservation, as well as in the protection of living endangered species."
But the article adds that the Trump administration "is citing the case of the dire wolf as it moves to reduce federal protections under the Endangered Species Act of 1973." (Wednesday U.S. interior secretary Doug Burgum has even posted on X "The concept of 'de-extinction' can serve as a bedrock for modern species conservation.")
And the article adds that "During a livestreamed town hall with Interior Department employees on April 9, Burgum said: "If we're going to be in anguish about losing a species, now we have an opportunity to bring them back. Pick your favorite species and call up Colossal. Ken Angielczyk, curator of mammal fossils at the Field Museum who researches extinct species that lived 200 to 300 million years ago, said it's a misguided approach. "If that's the basis ... for changing regulations related to the endangered species list, that is very, very premature," he said. "Because we can't resurrect things.... If the purpose is to restore the damage to the shared ecosystem, we have that opportunity right now," she said. "And that's the necessity immediately...."
"This whole idea that extinction is reversible is so dangerous," Marshall said, "because then it stops us caring."
Thanks to long-time Slashdot reader walterbyrd for sharing the news.
Creating a similar animal is not quite conserving (Score:5, Insightful)
It's like creating hollywood reboots of animals with no connection to the original ineage or the context they existed in
Re:Creating a similar animal is not quite conservi (Score:4, Insightful)
Even worse, people tend not to understand "instinct".
Despite depictions in popular culture, instinct is more closely related to environmental and social structures than to pure genetics. If we bring back a small number of animals and raise them in captivity, they certainly won't be the same as they originally were in their wild habitats, and will not behave normally even if re-introduced into the wild. Even with the best care and the best diet, animals in zoos rarely behave like their wild counterparts or have good health.
Extinction answer (Score:2)
1) De-extinct species that are dangerous to humans
2) dangerous species attack humans
3) humanity goes extinct
Problem of human caused extinction disappears...
oh, and
4) ???
5) Profit
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
1) De-extinct species that are dangerous to humans
2) dangerous species attack humans
3) humanity goes extinct
Just use the Jeff Goldblum quote: "God creates dinosaurs, God destroys dinosaurs. God creates Man, man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs"
There's zero point regardless (Score:5, Informative)
If a speciesl is driven to extinction by habitat loss, it's gone. If you could magically recreate them, they'd only have zoos OR you'd have to displace some other species that your resurrected one could live in.
If it's driven to extinction by hunting, there's some small hope, but not a lot.
Re: (Score:2)
The point is to preserve the genetics for our library. There isn't much point to conserving species in the first place beyond that. There are more species wiped out every day that we never discovered in the first place though other natural means than humans have wiped out across all our history. Neither is any more or less deserving of survival than the other but any might have properties which will be useful to us at some point so we should preserve and catalog what we can... if possible that would include
What (Score:2)
Who is "Conservations"?
Re: (Score:3)
Anyone coming to this story late isn't gonna understand your post, so -
The original title read "Conservations Say 'De-Extinction' Not the Answer to Saving Extinct Species"
Re: What (Score:2)
Well, thanks.
F*ck all of these considerations.... (Score:2)
Raises hand ... (Score:3)
'De-Extinction' Not the Answer to Saving Extinct Species
Um... How else does one save an extinct species?
Re: (Score:2)
'De-Extinction' Not the Answer to Saving Extinct Species
Um... How else does one save an extinct species?
You're assuming there is an answer.
Re: Raises hand ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Raises hand ... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
What do you expect an actual dire wolf to hunt with their natural prey also extinct? and where will they have adequate range when even the smaller grey wolf can't find decent parking thanks to frightened humans encroaching on their territory in their big SUVs?
I do not expect an actual dire wolf. RTFA. The rest of your comment makes even less sense.
Re: Raises hand ... (Score:2)
You might notice, my answer was in the context of the article which, if you had read it, pointed out the need to bring back the giant elk and deer it hunted as well as the much larger range of wilderness it would require to actually mak
Obviously (Score:1)
De extinction puts conservationists out of a job, who wouldn't protect their job
Re: (Score:2)
De extinction puts conservationists out of a job, who wouldn't protect their job
Don't RTFA. Think whatever you will. Also, your politics are showing . . .
Re: (Score:2)
You'd be foolish to guess someone's political views via one post.
Re: (Score:2)
Nonsense. Once a species is brought back, obviously it would need even more protection, increasing the number of conservation jobs.
Re: (Score:1)
Once a species is brought back, obviously it would need even more protection
The conservationists job is to eliminate humans. Having a species live in our company defeats their purpose.
IIRC, there was a conservationist who had remarked about the Chinese success in saving pandas, "We might as well eat the pandas." In other words: Humans still here meant failure. The point (in his mind) wasn't to save the species.
Re: (Score:1)
Very true. It's always been something of a sketchy area in my view.
Yes, yes, we have ecosystems and in some cases they can be fragile and collapse to cause bad things to happen. But aren't the changes sometimes good? No? No, cuz circular logic. For example invasive used to mean any non-native species that was harmful to the native environment. But again, what about helpful? This is where it gets circular, it is assumed that CHANGE to the native environment/ecosystem is innately harmful... after all ANY chan
Can't do anything else. (Score:1)
Being realistic.
You're not going to be able to stop the poor Indian or Chinese man from killing tigers to sell the parts to 'traditional medicine' practitioners. Not when it's either than or their family starves.
Same with any other place where humans either directly kills the 'endangered species' or does so indirectly because the only way they can put food on the table is to continue to do it, despite all the aid and help.
So that leaves only two realistic options, this, and fully deregulating pet ownership.
Re: (Score:2)
This has also been seen with Lions, Rhinos, and Elephants in Africa.
When the residents can profit off the animals in a legal way, such as safaris for Lions, and legal Rhino horn (which can be harvested without killing the Rhinos), you see actual effective protections pop up and populations rebound.
The total prohibition on Elephant Ivory has actually had mixed results. Poaching becomes a critical level problem.
There's a lot of secondary effects to policies that need to be taken into account to measure actua
If we can't even agree on what a woman is (Score:2)
It's Not Pokemon (Score:4, Interesting)
To use the pseudo-dire wolf PR puff as an excuse to delist the real wolf is biologically short sighted and far more dangerous than the childish stories of th Big Bad Wolf.
Without the apex predator the entire ecosystem is endangered. Maple, oak, and cedar will disappear to foraging deer and critically, deer will spread pathogens that will kill us.
Big game hunters hate wolves because they think they take all the trophies. But that's not how it works. Wolves mostly eat rodents which are easier to catch and more nutritious. When wolves hunt deer, they instinctively cull the weak and sick, not the trophies. The reality is the deer and ecosystem are sharpened on the wolf's tooth.
Chronic Wasting Disease, due to various political reasons, mostly to protect a lucrative tourism industry, has been ignored by humans for decades in the Midwest. Testing of deer has been slowly accepted but no humans are tested despite evidence that it can infect humans.
Likewise, COVID is endemic in white tail deer but testing has only been conducted since the virus became an issue with humans in 2020. It's easy to point at the pangolin and Chinese wet markets, but it's only because the Chinese were testing. No testing was being done of the American deer or human population.
Wolves, however, have taken note and have come down from the North to protect the herd and to protect us despite our Disney-learned naivety.
To use this dire wolf parlour trick as an excuse to delist actual wolves is a very dangerous policy. The cost of human intervention to stop CWD and COVID in deer is far more costly than welcoming the wolf. Pay now, or pay later... but it's going to cost a lot more later.
Without intervention, the white tail deer will continue to spread CWD and new COVID variants at an alarming pace. Studies have shown CWD prions can infect humans and there are anecdotal cases of hunters who have died of dementia related to CWD. More critically humans aren't being tested for CWD. Do we really want to wait for it to show up as a global pandemic before addressing the danger?
Unfortunately, the intervention requires science in a culture steeped in medical mistrust that has become a overwhelmingly malevolent force since the tobacco industry realised it had to undermine cancer research with scientific doubt in order to maintain their market.
Pretending to restore an extinct species is going to be of little use in stopping our course to our own extinction. Instead, we need to teach biology and reconnect to the land. Unfortunately, there's a huge financial incentive in the modern world to avoid that path; suicide sells more strophes.
CWD as Human Threat
https://idahocapitalsun.com/20... [idahocapitalsun.com]
https://www.neurology.org/doi/... [neurology.org]
Deer as Reservoir for COVID
https://news.osu.edu/covid-19-... [osu.edu]
https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com].
Re: (Score:1)
"Without intervention, the white tail deer will continue to spread CWD and new COVID variants at an alarming pace."
Or we could stop with the hunting restrictions which have caused the massive overpopulation of white tail deer.
Re: It's Not Pokemon (Score:3)
It's not really making a dent when a conservative estimate puts half the deer in Southern Wisconsin infected. Particularly when hunters are flying in to Wisconsin with no prohibition to taking home infected carcasses to all 50 states each year. Hunting season is still more a spreader event than prophyla
What humanity truly values, it breeds and refines. (Score:2)
If humans want a specialty custom critter they breed them for utility but also for amusement. That's the main reason the public support cute critters like Dire Wolves. No more profound reason required, simply the power to act.
Forces (Score:1)
I think it depends on what forces caused the extinction. Overhunting? We can solve for that in some places. Loss of habitat? Sounds more difficult to deal with. Ships running over ocean mammals? Only going to get worse. Plastics causing young to die off? Press F.
Re: (Score:2)
We don't really need to preserve the animals for the most part but preserving the genetics in our bag of tricks could be useful in case we need to bring some of those traits back.
While an ounce of prevention... (Score:2)