In June of 1993, the much anticipated Jurassic Park was introduced to theaters everywhere, which, according to Box Office Mojo, generated over $47,000,000 in profits on its opening weekend alone. The movie, detailing mass panic as carnivorous dinosaurs, painstakingly brought back from extinction, break away from their artificial habits and wreak havoc on their keepers, both captivated and horrified the imagination of its viewers. Although the events portrayed by Jurassic Park have forever remained in the realm of science fiction, the idea of de-extinction has not.
De-extinction is a fundamentally awesome, but fundamentally flawed idea. It is hard to ignore the wonder that one may feel as they gaze upon a fully grown, functioning Woolly Mammoth, …show more content…
However, that same sense of wonder and awe can easily blind us to the realities of a situation. It is tragically easy to lose sight of what it would take and the resources required to turn de-extinction into a viable method of repopulation. De-extinction is an impractical approach to re-population and conservation, and therefore should not be pursued by science because it shifts resources away from currently endangered animals, and we cannot justify spending money on it.
A grand feat of science such as de-extinction would require resources of biblical proportions, resources that, in my opinion and the opinion of others, can be used for better purposes. In “The Case Against De-Extinction: It’s a Fascinating but Dumb Idea,” by Paul R. Ehrlich, Stanford professor, as well as the president of the Center for Conservation Biology, questions the practicality of de-extinction. Ehrlich asserts that, instead of allocating resources such as funding & attention towards de-extinction, we should focus on the causes of extinction itself, later noting that the benefits of de-extinction …show more content…
Simply populating a struggling population of birds costs over 30 million dollars (Brand). Currently, scientists are looking at repopulating extinct species (Brand). In order to fully understand the costs of such an undertaking, it must be broken down. First, acknowledge that the concept of de-extinction is still in its infancy, and scientists do not yet have a complete understanding of what constitutes de-extinction, nor how to successfully jump start the process. This means that scientists will have to spend excess time and money researching and developing ways to undergo the process of de-extinction, before they even get to the point of implementing it on a wide scale, which by itself will cost a significant amount of money. Additionally, scientists will have to figure out a way to introduce said species back into their respective environments. It’s a lot less likely to be a problem with recently extinct species, such as the species of goat that Alberto Fernanndez-Arias and his team tried to revive, but with species such as the passenger pigeon, which have been extinct since 1914, it will be considerably harder to re-integrate them into their original environments. One of the reasons for this difficulty is the fact that in the 100 years since their disappearance, the world and its ecology has changed considerably (Ehrlich). The American Chestnut, once one of the passenger pigeon’s main food sources, is, as
De-extinction is a fundamentally awesome, but fundamentally flawed idea. It is hard to ignore the wonder that one may feel as they gaze upon a fully grown, functioning Woolly Mammoth, …show more content…
However, that same sense of wonder and awe can easily blind us to the realities of a situation. It is tragically easy to lose sight of what it would take and the resources required to turn de-extinction into a viable method of repopulation. De-extinction is an impractical approach to re-population and conservation, and therefore should not be pursued by science because it shifts resources away from currently endangered animals, and we cannot justify spending money on it.
A grand feat of science such as de-extinction would require resources of biblical proportions, resources that, in my opinion and the opinion of others, can be used for better purposes. In “The Case Against De-Extinction: It’s a Fascinating but Dumb Idea,” by Paul R. Ehrlich, Stanford professor, as well as the president of the Center for Conservation Biology, questions the practicality of de-extinction. Ehrlich asserts that, instead of allocating resources such as funding & attention towards de-extinction, we should focus on the causes of extinction itself, later noting that the benefits of de-extinction …show more content…
Simply populating a struggling population of birds costs over 30 million dollars (Brand). Currently, scientists are looking at repopulating extinct species (Brand). In order to fully understand the costs of such an undertaking, it must be broken down. First, acknowledge that the concept of de-extinction is still in its infancy, and scientists do not yet have a complete understanding of what constitutes de-extinction, nor how to successfully jump start the process. This means that scientists will have to spend excess time and money researching and developing ways to undergo the process of de-extinction, before they even get to the point of implementing it on a wide scale, which by itself will cost a significant amount of money. Additionally, scientists will have to figure out a way to introduce said species back into their respective environments. It’s a lot less likely to be a problem with recently extinct species, such as the species of goat that Alberto Fernanndez-Arias and his team tried to revive, but with species such as the passenger pigeon, which have been extinct since 1914, it will be considerably harder to re-integrate them into their original environments. One of the reasons for this difficulty is the fact that in the 100 years since their disappearance, the world and its ecology has changed considerably (Ehrlich). The American Chestnut, once one of the passenger pigeon’s main food sources, is, as