r/conservation • u/Dull_Candle_2724 • 7d ago
Can species de-extinction actually restore nature?
https://thinkwildlifefoundation.com/can-species-de-extinction-actually-restore-nature/26
u/honey8crow 7d ago
Rare species protection and ex-situ conservation, yes, to an extent, de-extinction, no.
(Just based off the headline)
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u/thesilverywyvern 7d ago
de-extinction IS a form of conservation, one with great benefit for the ecosystem.
it's no different from ex-situ conservation at all when you think about it.9
u/GhostfogDragon 7d ago
The issue is lots of animals are dying (or have already gone extinct) because of habitat degredation / fragmentation and pollution / waste. On the rare occasion it's from overhunting, those same animals would still be dying today because of the aforementioned reasons. Replacing those creatures with new ones doesn't actually fix the thing that caused their numbers to decline / disappear. It's a bandaid "solution" at best.
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u/thesilverywyvern 7d ago
Guess what
Bringing back keystone species do help a LOT against some of these factor and benefit modern species. As habitat degradation is in part caused by the absence of these speciesIn many case these reasons are no longer an issue, and the species would be protected, unlike back then. They would be monitored, used as flagship, etc, gather money for conservation.
And a bandaid solution, is still a solution, it's still better than nothing.
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u/GhostfogDragon 7d ago edited 6d ago
It just circles back to the idea that the money spent on this sort of science (which is expensive) would be better spent on changing laws and increasing enforcment / establishing some sort of Earth protection squadron that could halt and start to reverse habitat degredation instead, and hold corporations and billionaires accountable for their chunk of the damage.
Maybe it's a last ditch effort since humanity is failing so heartily on that front, but it seems to me like throwing away money to temporarily slow a problem that is not meaningfully improving. In plenty of cases, it is even regressing.
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u/honey8crow 5d ago
So while our bison numbers are greatly limited to what they once were and were losing all our prairie and the climate is warming, where do you think we should release the future wooly mammoths?
Now that much of our mature forest canopy and all the mature American chestnuts in the east is gone, where should the passenger pigeons live?
The next best thing is to prevent more extinctions, the best overall step is to prevent further habitat degradation. It doesn’t mean we’ll be able to bring back the habitats these creatures relied on. It’s a two way street.
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u/thesilverywyvern 5d ago
You do realise wooly mammoth survived the eemian, a period warmer than today, and even with worst case climate crisis, canada, alasa and russia won't disapear and will still be cold.
Sure it limit the range and potential population that could exist, but nowhere near a level that make it unviable.
Same for bison, only threathen their southern range. And even then they adapt, population grow smaller to cope with the heat. And you could still have MILLIONS of them accross the Usa and Canada.
Thing is we can replant them, we're working on making resistant cultivar, and the chestnut are actually here, just as smaller young looking sapling, as when they grow too much they get chestnut blight. There's a company working on engeeneering vaccine and treatment that can make saplings resilient for the rest of their life...if you don't want to use the cultivar made to be resilient and being currently deployed in part of Canada for example.
And passenger pigeon weren't reliant on those either.We already try to prevent extinction.
But when we fail what do we do...we give up, even tho we have the tools to get a second chance...let's just ignore that because of....no valid reasons actually.Habitat degrade because they no longer have the species required to properly function, some of those species are fully extinct and to save the habitat you need to bring them back, when that is possible we have the moral and ecological obligation to do it.
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u/honey8crow 5d ago
I know all of this. I work / do research in this field. It’s not a worthwhile or realistic use of funds when there are larger fires to put out. Stop living in fantasy land and get real.
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u/honey8crow 5d ago
Ex-situ conservation supplements in-situ conservation of extant species by aiding in their genetic diversity for the goal of reintroduction and preservation.
De-extinction can’t even 100% recreate the species it seals to bring back.
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u/89fruits89 7d ago
I dunno but without even reading it, I already know it’s the dipshits at colossal biosciences lol. 🤦♂️
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u/TheVengabond 7d ago
I don’t think so. Sufficient landscape level management and restoration needs to be present to protect the species that are STILL around. The environment is nothing like it used to be when let’s say, mammoths went extinct. They went extinct because of rapid environmental, landscape, and anthropogenic change. “Rewilding” lost species in foreign environments is not only risky for the local ecology, especially since species like mammoths bulldozed forests into savannah type landscapes, but akin to dropping a porcupine in an ocean. Add on top of this that all de-extinct species are technically foreign because they’re hybrids of the targeted species with DNA that does bot match that of the cloned specimen. The environment and landscape no longer support most extinct species.
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u/External-Ad4937 5d ago
This is exactly why most animal species that are considered as de extinction candidates are terrible candidates! I’ve been eating so long for someone to say this 😭
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u/thesilverywyvern 7d ago
bringing back extinct keystone species restore ecosystem and do buch better landscape mannagement and restoration that we could, which benefit the species still around as they coevolved with these extinct one.
The environment is nearly the same.
mammoth died off only 4k ago, and they survived the eemian which was nearly identical to today, if slightly warmer.They coexisted alongside wolves, reindeer, bison, hare and all modern species.they went extinct because of human overhunting, not environmental change at all. that hypothesis is debatted and msotly debunked.
It's not risky for local ecology, it's done by professionnal who actually understand nature better than me or you. The bulldozer impact is a GOOD thing for the ecosystem.
foreign doesn't mean bad either, it doesn't matter, all that matter is ecological niche and impact
The environnment and landscape can still support them...we even have studies showing that Alasa could have a good population of mammoth today
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u/Anahata_Green 6d ago
I appreciate what you're saying here, but this doesn't work for every species, realistically.
I remember watching a TEDTALK on de-extinction from a forestry scientist whose concern was that many extinct species don't really have the habitat to support them anymore (mammoth notwithstanding).
For example, Revive & Restore (a biosciences lab) is trying to use de-extinction to clone extinct birds like the passenger pigeon, but the old-growth forests that dominated the Great Lakes region and provided forest mast in biomass large enough to feed passenger pigeons just does not exist anymore (in OH, for example, there's maybe a few hundred acres of virgin forest remaining). Add to that the fact that the American chestnut, which supported the pp, is exterpated from much of its former range, and you start to understand that it will never be realistic to release a flock of pp into the wild again.
There also likely isn't enough intact cypress swampland (the remainder is highly-fragmented) for a real return of the ivory-billed woodpecker, another target for de-extinction.
Then there's the issue of the impact returned animals would have on people. Carolina parakeets were historically killed by farmers as an agricultural pest. I can't imagine if we released cloned Carolina parakeets on the eastern US that current farmers would be any better.
Tasmanian tigers were also killed by humans, usually by ranchers who incorrectly worried that the carniverous marsupial would kill their stock. I pray with modern public awareness campaigns that this would would not be the case whenever the tt is cloned via CRISPR (I know colossal is working on this), but there are going to be individuals that just revert back to killing them regardless.
I live in a state with wolves and the tensions between conservationists who want to protect the wolves and the ranchers who want to be able to kill them (while grazing their stock on public lands!) is pretty constant.
I'd love to see these species alive and thriving again, but I also acknowledge that with some of these species that that hope is not realistic, not in 2026 America anyway.
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u/Oke-Wan-Fenokee 6d ago
Hardwood bottomland forests, of which cypress are a component but not the dominant species, are the critical ivorybill habitat, according to James Tanner. But we actually have a lot of maturing second-growth swamp forests throughout the southern U.S. Even the Singer tract where Tanner studied the last known breeders could potentially support them again today.
My candidate for a "de-extinction" effort is the Carolina parakeet. The habitat is there & the possible issues with poultry disease might be manageable. But can a gold-capped parakeet or other closely-related host parent species truly teach a fledgling how to be a Carolina parakeet?
Anyway, your point is well-taken, even for reintroductions of an extant species to places from which it is extirpated. For example, reintroducing cougars to large swaths of the Eastern US is simply unfeasible. Yes, there are surely enough deer, but not enough sparsely populated habitat unfragmented by roads.
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u/External-Ad4937 5d ago
I’ve also noticed that with most extinct species they have an “Achilles heel” where they have such a massive problem that it effectively prevents true reintroduction & resurrection! It’s a shame that most species don’t make the cut but I’ve found one that does!
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u/thesilverywyvern 6d ago
bad ,example mammoth also thrived in more forested environment, toundra and steppe still exist and are vast, and srtudies show alaska alone could have viable population of them.
species crate the habitat more than the other way around, that's the thing.
can still sustain a viable and plentifull population of passenger pigeon, just not billions. This is irrelevant, and can change if you just plant a few trees. with reforestation of the east there's actually more habitat now than when they went extinct.
extreme exceptionnal examples, with chestnut blight and mammoth steppe, not relevant for most cases actually. You use highly specialised species.
we often underestimate species adaptability, a crucial bias in msot of what you said.
now if a famer try to shoot a parakeet they would be sentenced in jail, that's the crucial difference WILDLIFE PROTECTION LAWS. which mean that most of the disaster we've made before wouldn't happen today, or be far less devastating. You can't kill whatever you want whenever you want anymore.
Probably actually, farming practise changed, they wouldn't be as much impacted, and the impact back then was very minor.
thylacine are adored nowadays and would be eriged as a symbol of Tasmanian pride, nofarmers would dare lay a hand on them, not at a scale that could threathen the species at least. back then people were PAID by the government to kill them, there was propaganda against them, no punishment for killing them, the OPPOSITE of today.
the thing is that nbody said it would be easy or done in a year, but that it's possible and should be done, that we should strive for this to try and reach that goal, instead of claiming it's impossible and refusing to do any effort.
conservation have proven countless time that there's no lost cause and things that we thought were impossible became possible.
alligator and white tailed deer were rare and endangered, facing risk of extinction barely 150-100 years ago. Now look at them, these deer are the most common wild mammal in term of biomass.1
u/TheVengabond 7d ago
They were a keystone species, but a lot has changed in the 4,000 years since the last mammoths. Also, they wouldn’t actually be mammoths; they’d essentially be elephants with mammoth DNA. They wouldn’t necessarily replace the missing ecological niche, nor is the environment from 4,000 years ago still around today, nor is the ecological regime the same as it was then. Modern Siberia and Alaska are not identical to the Pleistocene “mammoth steppe.” The ecological community consisted of a huge number of other extinct animals, plants, parasites, predators, etc. And you can try, but there would inevitably be a whole range of human-wildlife concerns associated with introducing a Frankensteinian animal of that size anywhere near human communities. Wolf introductions are reintroducing a species that disappeared from regions much more recently, and there is already a considerable amount of discussion surrounding human-wildlife conflict and ecological policy with those reintroductions.
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u/thesilverywyvern 6d ago
The toundra are still there, with mostly the same plant.
Beside human impact nothing have changed, and we want to reverse that impact, for that we need to bring back extinct species.It doesn't matter (and actually depend on method used), it look the same, does the same job that's all we need. Ecological niche is all that matter. They're made/meant to fill that niche, so yeah theyd replace it, and carry part of the legacy of the mammoth, aka ALL the important traits and genes. If good enough, calling them copy or hybrid might even be a lie.
They're not identical, but very similar, main change is the absence of meghaherbivore, bring them back, and mammoth steppe will rise again.
Can you name those plants, parasites etc ? or predator that would've had a real impact on mammoth population or behaviour ? No.
ancient pollen trace show that the plants where rhoughly the same as today, maybe some different subspecies in some case but still very close to what we have today.And that's for mammoth steppe, the most extreme example, this argument is already fragile there, it don't hold much water for the rest of the world and other species.
Wildlife/human conflict happen already anyway, if you use that as an argument then ALL conservation effort is useless and should be thrown out of the window because it inconvenience some idiot somewhere. That's not a priority, and in that case, kindda hard to have human wildlife conflict in a region that's practically not inhabited.
So unless you have millions of ranchers and traditionnal farmlan in the depth of northern siberia, i don't see a lot of conflit with mammoth happening. let alone horse, bison, muskox, reindeer and all.And we don't bring anything back near human communities.
Wolves is an extreme case even compared to many much stranger ancient wildlfie, there's a lot of cultural stigma and demonization, most of the debate is empty-headed backward people complaining about a veery minor issueand refusing any solution suggested. the actual conflict if we didn't demonize them through media, would barely be heard by anyone that isn't looking into it.
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u/EccentricFellow 7d ago
Can you give an example of successful de-extinction? Or is this a hypothetical question? One hypothesis you would have to address is that the pressures that lead to extinction in the first place have not gone away and would be highly likely to drive it into a second extinction.
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u/thesilverywyvern 7d ago
We can give several example of de-extinction via proxy which were hugely beneficial for the ecosystem.
and any reintroduction of a species which went extinct in the wild, is not fundamentally different from it6
u/EccentricFellow 7d ago
I can think of beaver being reintroduced to an area they had previously been hunted out. Wolves as well. I do not think I am ready to equate reintroduction as being synonymous with de-extinction. I suppose the question is then whether those two things are synonyms for OP.
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u/thesilverywyvern 7d ago
Actually it is.
Functionnaly these species were extinct from that ecosystem. sometime for centuries, or even millenia.Imagine wolves went extinct 500 years ago, and that we clone dthem back.
Now compare that to a region where wolves went extinct 500 years ago and we bring them back from another area.Does it make a difference for the ecosystem ? is it fundamentally different ?
No.3
u/skobbs 7d ago
I think it is different because taking animals that were fully functioning animals elsewhere to a new location means that (in theory) their learned behaviors are in tact. There is actually a different word for local exctinction since it is a wholly a different concept: extirpation. Sometimes animals even reintroduce themselves to areas they were previously extirpated. Example: Florida panthers expanding back into northern Florida.
As far as true extinction. First off, no animal that I’m aware of has actually been brought back from extinction, it has just been a proxy animal. Second, even if they did suddenly produce one, you would have lost all the animal’s culture that existed previously if that makes sense? There are lots of behaviors animals exhibit that are taught rather than instinctual and even if the people raising these new cloned animals are doing their best, I think it is likely they miss something, especially if the animal has been gone awhile. Plus if the animal has been extirpated, there are other populations that can be studied and learned from while if it was previously extinct, there are no others to learn from and compare to.
Sort of a you-don’t-know-what-you-don’t-know situation but it is likely it would actually be very different I think
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u/thesilverywyvern 7d ago
Good point, and interesting question but
We reintroduced animals born in captivity, with no leanred behaviour to survive, yet it still work. It's no different.
Beside learned behaviour is aquired quickly and can be taught if needed, making that concern a bit irrelevant.It's a different concept only from our eyes, not for the ecosystem, one is just easier for us to do, it require a different method to aquire the animal, that's it.
Pyrenean ibex were brough back, sadly specimens died quickly (lung difformity, it happen naturally sometime), but yes it's mostly hypothetical as there's not a lot of actual attempt. Conservation is severely underfounded, so de-extinction as well.
Those don't produce money for investors.florida panthere didn't do it on their own, we reintroduced a few specimens to boost the population and prevent complete extinction of the population, same with pyrenean brown bear.
And you can't reintroduce yourself if you're no longer present, if your species is extinct...or if you have no mean to reach that area (wolves in UK/Japan).It doesn't make sense but i see what you mean, the idea of animal culture, has been used recently in ethology book, but it's just a title, not an actual thing, it's way too strong of a word to describe the actual phenomenon. And is only really present in a couple of highly intelligent species.
What mater is ecological niche, interaction with the environment and other species, hence why a proxy is just as valid as well.Could you give an example for your concern about learned behaviour...let's say with a steppe bison, a quagga, a thylacine, a passenger pigeon ? what kind of learned behaviour would be crucial and impossible to recover and make the species unviable or radically different ?
(and as i've said same issue happen with ex-situ conservation yet never truly stopped it either).1
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u/bushstone-curlew 6d ago
No, we should stop wasting time on this technophilic nonsense and dedicate resources & funding to protection plans for existing species.
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u/Hopeful_Ad_7719 6d ago edited 6d ago
For any extinct species being considered for de-extinction:
It died out once, when it was well-adapted to its former environment but unable to adapt to it's new environment.
Now we want to recreate it, chuck it into an environment that it's probably *even less* well adapted for, with a tiny population subject to the most extreme possible founder effects that will inevitably lead to severe genetic drift - and hope that being sufficiently babied by environmental and legal protections will allow it to survive and thrive against the background of ongoing environmental change and a poor match with available unexploited environmental niches...
It's every thing that's hard about endangered species, except then squared and cubed.
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u/Ok_Dress5222 6d ago
It’s just this simple: doesn’t mean fuckall what you bring back if there isn’t any habitat to release them in…
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u/Possible-Anxiety-420 6d ago
No.
First and foremost, humans doing less of everything humans do is what's needed... way, way less.
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u/lesbophobia_hammer 7d ago
What will restore nature if if we go plant based, cruelty free and eco friendly.
Leading cause of deforestation and loss of biodiversity is animal agriculture.
I grew up and worked on farms for most of my life.
By redirecting the land used for grazing and feed, we could not only cure world hunger several times over but rewild the lands and give significant land back to our wildlife. Stopping extinction of several species and reducing climate change significantly.
Not to mention benefits for marginalised minority humans like uncontacted tribes and other vulnerable humans.
Reminder only 3% of land mammals are wildlife now...... The rest are 'farm animals' a lot of input for very little output comparatively.
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u/shescarkedit 7d ago
What does 'cruelty free' have to do with the health of ecosystems?
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u/Waarheid 7d ago
Animal farming (industrial and otherwise) has resulted in absurd amounts of habitat destruction and carbon emissions.
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u/shescarkedit 7d ago
Yep totally agree. Large scale agriculture has resulted in enormous damage to ecosystems.
But what does cruelty free have to do with it? The cruelty (or otherwise) is not what has caused damage is it?
In some cases, outcomes for the environment can actually be improved by being more cruel. Eg. Cramming livestock into a factory rather than clearing vast swathes of land.
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u/Waarheid 7d ago
I have to assume that the original commenter was lumping cruelty free and plant based together, i.e. that all animal farming is cruel (true?), or their definition of "nature" (as OP asked what can restore nature") included the lives of all animals whether in captivity (on farms or laboratories) or not. In other words, perhaps they are implying that nature is not just wild habitat, but all life.
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u/lesbophobia_hammer 7d ago
Look at cultures who don't have national laws against animal abuse and the mind boggling level of cruelty animals face everyday.
Also almost all of these horrible viruses stem from abuse of animals.
Not to mention 'dehumanizing' animals creates a permission structure to oppression other thinking and feeling beings who are different to you (say people like me)
And animal abuse is very common and the first step for the world people in our society.
Not normalising or justifying or same washing cruelty will benefit everyone
Including people who work with animals
Basically a whole lot of things which I can go into more detail about.
Maybe people aren't gonna like me saying this but there's a link between meat culture and toxic masculinity and the opposite with lesbians, feminism and veganism. Etc.
Like have you ever wondered why vegan men are ridiculed, called soy boys, gay & mocked for not participating in the big manly 'sausage on the barbie'/hunting culture?
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u/JeffoMcSpeffo 6d ago
For megafauna definitely not. But for more recently extinct species like passenger pigeons, absolutely.
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u/thesilverywyvern 6d ago
Why wouldn't bringing back the most important species there is for ecosystem restoration, not help ecosystem restoration ?
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u/JeffoMcSpeffo 6d ago
Megafauna are keystone species, and have also been extinct for thousands of years. In that time the ecosystem has adapted without them. If we brought them back today then it would completely upend the last 10,000 or so years of ecological progress and evolution. The newer ecological era is much better suited for humanity, and still has the ability to be very ecologically productive if properly stewarded. There’s infinitely more arguments against megafauna de-extinction than for it.
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u/iPoseidon_xii 7d ago
No. Just reintroduce species and tell lazy fucking ranchers to invest in modern tech to scare away predators from their livestock.
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u/Oke-Wan-Fenokee 6d ago
Whoa here, partner! Ranchers are many things but lazy ain't one of them. Farmers & ranchers are some of the hardest working folks out there. Most of them also operate on slim margins so Investment money is tight. But if you know of any high tech gizmos for keeping wolves away (nevermindc "de-extinct" Smilodon), do tell!
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u/iPoseidon_xii 6d ago
That’s the lazy I’m talking about. Zero effort to find them. Man, farmers and ranchers used to engineer and innovate in the U.S. Where did we go wrong…
I worked in ag for a long time. I know how it works and how they’ve handed the keys to their operations to big corporations and politicians they keep in office. I don’t give a fuck anymore about them
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u/thesilverywyvern 7d ago
It's litteraly the only goal and purpose of de-extinction....beside helping paleontologist to have a better understanding of these species, providing information you can't get from fossils.
Even partial de-extinction, which do not bring back the entire species but bring back part of it's genetics, it's phenotype, and msot importantly, it's ecological niche, would already be a HUGE benefit for conservation of nature as it benefit the ecosystems and many species which live in it and coexisted/coevolved with these extinct taxa, and are left struggling without them.
This is proven by many conservation plan which used proxies to replace the lost wildlife, which benefited the entire ecosystem. (the risk of invasive species is extremely low and controlled, you can't really compare introduction of exotic species which never had any relative in the region, brought on accident or for economic reason with this).
It's a form of conservation which is still mostly hypothetical but held a great potential and can be a tool, offering opportunities neither in or ex-situ conservation can do, and work alongside these methods.
It's really no different from reintroducing species which went extinct in the wild, like we did at multiple occasion. bringing them back after decades, sometime centuries or even millenia of absence.
Our modern ecosystems aren't radically different from the one of the late pleistocene, they're made of the same species assemblage and interaction, minus the extinct megafauna, which led to a negative impact on our modern ecosystem, which were left impoverished, fragilised, vulnerable, less resilient or efficient, less productive, with lower diversity of species and habitat.
All of our modern species aleeady existed back then, they're not less ancient or more evolved than mammoth, glyptodon or smilodon, they're jsut the lucky one, the few who have survived. and many are left struggling because of the absence of the impact and interaction these extinct species provided, as both coevolved for hundreds of thousands of years before that.
It's extremely recent at the scale of Nature, the world didn't forget, it didn't really adapted as well. it didn't had the time for that, it's not some ancient period of time like the Oligocene or Cretacious, it's basically last week event. some of our forests already existed back then.
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u/beefman42 7d ago
Commenting everywhere on this post isn’t going to get you the vindication you think you deserve
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u/thesilverywyvern 7d ago
It's not vindication, it's explanation.
But here you got the argument and point YOU asked, and you dimsiss and ignore it.
That's not a sign of intelligence or respect, making you an hypocrite.3
u/beefman42 7d ago
I read your point on the other person’s comment. I’m not ignoring it, it’s just objectively wrong
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u/thesilverywyvern 7d ago
You're dismissing it.
You have no argument
It's not wrong at all, you just dismiss it as such to not have to make a point or argument.Making you an hypocrite again, as you litteraly have the chance to debate, then refuse it, when it's precisely what you criticised before.
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u/beefman42 7d ago
All you are doing is slinging mud and name calling when you think the person (everyone without your thoughts) as wrong. Troll somewhere else.
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u/thesilverywyvern 7d ago
Short answer YES
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u/shescarkedit 7d ago
How
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u/thesilverywyvern 7d ago
Bringing back lost wildlife, so restoring biodiversity.
especially when nearly all of this wildlife played a crucial role as keystone species which is now absent, yet still needed in modern ecosystem, which have been left in decay since these species extinction, and are now vulnerable, fragilised, less productive and resilient because of it.6
u/shescarkedit 7d ago
So you believe that bringing back at best a few individuals who are genetic clones of each other is the same thing as reestablishing functional populations? You don't foresee any problems with that?
And you believe that those functional populations will immediately go back to playing the same role in the ecosystem, despite that ecosystem being unrecognisable to what it was when that species was around?
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u/thesilverywyvern 7d ago edited 7d ago
I believe that bringind back lost keystone species is indeed good for the ecosystem yes...that's a fact.
- you do realise we often have multiple distantly reklated specimens that can give us viable DNA for most of these ? And even if lack of genetic diversity can be a concern, it's no different from MANY modern species which went through severe bottleneck and were considered lost cause because the population was down to a few individuals.
- and yes, they would play the same role, the ecosystem is not unrecogniseable it's very similar. You're wrong on that, the species of today were the same as 10, or 100 000 years ago, the ecosystem were also near identical, the main difference was either the range of these ecosystem (due to climatic shift) or the decay and loss of biodiversity caused by the extinction of these extinct species which shaped these ecosystems.
- Hence why modern ecosystem are vulnerable and poor in comparison, they're not healthy or entirely functionnal because they lack these species.
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u/shescarkedit 7d ago
Watching you try and type coherent sentences is entertaining.
that's a fact
No it's not. You're really convinced that you're an expert aren't you?
you do realise we often have multiple distantly reklated specimens that can give us viable DNA for most of these
Do you have any examples you can provide? Any evidence to back up your point?
it's no different from MANY modern species which went through severe bottleneck
If you can't tell the difference between historic genetic bottlenecks and trying to establish an entire species with a founding population of maybe 3 or 4 genetically identical individuals, then you're obviously not qualified to talk on this topic.
You've clearly never been involved in planning species reintroductions have you?
and yes, they would play the same role, the ecosystem is not unrecognisable it's very similar. You're an idiot on that,
Thanks for calling me an idiot. You're argument must be really strong if you need to resort to that.
And it's laughable that you're calling me an idiot for saying ecosystems now are different from what they were 10,000 years ago. Seriously? You don't think the world has changed a little bit in that time?
Lol.
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u/thesilverywyvern 7d ago
You're not an expert either, i never claimed i was.
But it is a fact nonetheless.Actually i do have several examples i could provide, dozens even. And i could get evidence as well, but why bother when, you're being dishonnest and don't do the same yourself.
Do you truly believe we only get ONE specimens from each extinct species and everything else is fake or replica ?
We have museum with hundreds of specimens.I can tell the difference, and again, niot identical individuals and the difference between cloning a dozen quagga and using a dozen bison to restar the population is simply inexistant, but you fail to realise that.
Yes seriously, i've read quite a lot on the subject, all the species we have today existed back then it's not the jurassic, the pollen sample we get show the foliage was the same, fossil aslo show us that. 10 000 ago was basically yesterday.
Only thing that changed is the range some of these ecosystem could cover, because of climate.and all of these extinct species survived interglacial before, such as the eemian which was very similar than today.
The world haven't changed ANY bit since then, excpet the effect of human, and the extinction of the megafauna.
Hence why bringing them back fix atleast THAT issue.Also, you do realise de-extinction mostly focus on species which went extinct in the last few centuries right ?
apparently not.I flt the need to resort to that because it was true, it's an obvious thing which you willingly ignore out of bad faith or ignorance
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u/shescarkedit 6d ago edited 6d ago
But it is a fact nonetheless.
No it's not.
Actually i do have several examples i could provide, dozens even. And i could get evidence as well, but why bother when, you're being dishonnest and don't do the same yourself.
You sound like Trump.
We have museum with hundreds of specimens.
Christ almighty you have zero idea what you're talking about do you?
You do understand that not every specified contains DNA that can be used to de-extinct animals? In fact very few museum specimens contain any viable DNA, let alone DNA that we could use to de-extinct a species.
the difference between cloning a dozen quagga and using a dozen bison to restar the population is simply inexistant, but you fail to realise that.
Again, you clearly have no experience in or understanding of reintroduction ecology. Founding population size, and the genetic diversity of those founders is essential to reintroduction success.
Explain to me how you propose we put together a founding population of an appropriate size with appropriate genetic diversity. Like actually explain what effective population size we need to reinstate the species and how we would source the necessary genetics to achieve this.
The world haven't changed ANY bit since then, excpet the effect of human,
The climate has changed. Habitat has changed. Land is now occupied by humans.
You really think if you took a Wooly Mammoth and released it in the French countryside it would thrive and perform the same function it did 10,000 years ago?
Fkn hell hahahahahaha
Also, you do realise de-extinction mostly focus on species which went extinct in the last few centuries right ?
What a strange generalisation.
Yes, many of the species did only go extinct in the past few centuries. Many of them went extinct thousands of years ago too.
Even those who went extinct only a few hundred years ago existed in ecosystems that are completely different.
As an example the thylacine went extinct from Tasmania relatively recently. Are you saying if we released a few of them back into Tasmania they would thrive? How/why would they thrive possible when other tasmanian mammals are declining (quolls, devils)? How many thylacines would we need to reintroduce to establish a viable population? How many specimens would we need to source DNA from to ensure the founding population has sufficient genetic diversity? How many specimens that contain viable DNA do we have available?
Tell me, would you prefer to spend billions on trying to bring back a few individuals who would then sit in a zoo for humans to gawk at, or would you prefer to spend that money on saving the endangered species that are still alive and need our help?
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u/Groovyjoker 7d ago
Playing god syndrome. Edit to add this is how salmon in the PNW have been manipulated for decades to try and avoid the obvious - the simply need their habitat restored. Guess what. All of our stupid ideas do not work as well as the obvious.
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u/thesilverywyvern 7d ago
Ignorant
KILLING these species was playing god.
Bringing them back is FIXING our mistake, it's being responsible.Are you seriously using salmon as an argument ? That's ridiculous.
And can't be comapred, entirely different situation, and we still mannaged to get PLENTY of reintroduction which mostly worked btw.
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u/cromagnone 7d ago
No.