The use of CRISPR-Cas9 to reintroduce traits from extinct species such as the woolly mammoth. This is a groundbreaking advancement in genetic engineering. While these efforts aim to restore lost ecosystems, they also raise significant ethical and ecological concerns. Should we prioritize conserving critically endangered species like polar bears, whose survival is directly threatened by climate change and habitat loss, rather than focusing on reviving extinct ones?
Could manipulating nature in this way lead to unforeseen consequences for biodiversity and ecological balance? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the potential risks and benefits of de-extinction in the context of current conservation challenges.
Just my knee jerk reaction to this is why on earth are we attempting to re-engineer an extict species ecosystem when 1. we can't preserve our own 2. we woud need to balance the current global ecosystems efore even eing able to gauge whether introducing new ones was eco-responsible. Using the balanced state as the base line reference for the new. 3. I could go all daty with how horrific an idea that would be! Sorry not to provide a more educated answer than that but is a more educated one even necessary?
I think that the ecological barriers might make ethical questions moot. After all, the habitat that shaped these species in are nothing like the current habitat. The habitat has changed and that is probably why they went extinct in the first place. It is the story the earth's changing environments that govern extinction and subsequent radiations in the evolutonary process.
For species that have gone extinct through hunting and such, and for which the habitat persists, the ethics are clearly on the side of retrieving them.
I doubt that the intention is to recover lost ecosystems. Recovering a species, or ten, is not an ecosystem, composed of countless species (animals, plants, bacteria, ...). I think the interest is on the one hand academic (can we achieve it?) and on the other economic (if we achieve it we will have visits and merchandising).
If it is achieved, must should consider release (slightly probable) or keep them in thematic parks, as in Jurassic Park.
In any case, it never will be the original species, we don't have the complete DNA and RNA of any extinct species, they would be an imitation, a mix of mammut and current elephant.
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