Should We Bring Back Extinct Species? - WAC

Almost everyone knows of the tales told of the animals in the past. Where animals such as monstrous Dinosaurs, mammoths, and Tasmanian tigers roamed the earth. Well, modern science has given opportunity to bring back these species from the past. Even though Dinosaurs aren't as likely to happen, there are still possibilities of bringing back those that have become extinct more recently. Modern science has proven to have the prowess of reviving these extinct species. Controversy regarding the subject has stirred among the community of those interested in the discussion, and is shown that not everyone is on board with this idea. This is because reviving these extinct species could take a lot of time, effort, and money that could very well be spent on a failed project. I am in the group of people that isn't supporting the concept of De-Extinction, and I will address all of my arguments separately in this essay.

The first argument I have against de-extinction is the complications that bring these animals back would cause. Let's say that we were to successfully bring back one of these species, where would they even go? what would they eat for food, and if they did find a source of food, would those species die out as well? Similar questions to these were also asked in the SENCER article "Should We Bring Back Extinct Species". A quote that supported my ideas from this article was "We don’t know the environmental impacts of bringing back extinct species. Would they be invasive? If there weren’t predators for this species, it could become overpopulated. Alternatively, it could become a “new” predator and wipe out other species". Another concern to this topic is if these species that are brought back would even be protected or not. This was mentioned in the KQED article "Reawakening Extinct Species". This was seen in the quote "There are significant practical, ethical, and legal questions yet to be worked out, such as whether de-extincted species would be protected by the Endangered Species Act or would find sufficient habitat in which to thrive." This is the first reason why I believe that de-extinction could be problematic to today's environments.

The next argument I have against this topic is the fact that all these resource might be inevitably useless and end in a failed project. These species that are already extinct are probably meant to stay extinct and I only say this because the initial purpose of them becoming extinct may very well be the cause of them becoming extinct again. These species coming back also may be at the cost of several other species. This can be seen in the article "We Might Soon Resurrect Extinct Species. Is It Worth the Cost?" from the New York times. In this article, Dr. Bennet gave his thoughts on the topic. “If you have the millions of dollars it would take to resurrect a species and choose to do that, you are making an ethical decision to bring one species back and let several others go extinct,” Dr. Bennett said. “It would be one step forward, and three to eight steps back.” This attempts have been done before and were almost successful, but not quite there every time. An example of this would be in 1989, when there was a species of mountain goat that was going extinct. Scientists were able to collect and gather samples of the very few animals left and attempt to "clone" them. This resulted in several unsuccessful procedures, but a spark of hope came when they were able to finally deliver one of the baby goats. This goat was born in 2003, but died after a few minutes from a lung deformity. This caused millions of dollars in resources to go down the drain.

Even though they were unsuccessful in cloning the animal, the research did end up making several breakthroughs that could potentially help other animals. This proves that this research could be beneficial to other things, but would be wasted if used on de-extinction. There are tons of animals that are on the brink of extinction and could be saved using this revolutionary research and technology. This can be seen in the quote from the SENCER article in the quote “[This technology] could be used to help populate species that are currently endangered, or to diversify the gene pool of species with little genetic variation, leaving populations less susceptible to viruses, bacterial infections and disease". This is why I believe that the research backing de-extinction should be used for something that could be worth our time and money, and could be very possible if done in the right hands.

In conclusions, de-extinction is something that would be not desirable for the following reasons. The resources, time, and money that would be spent trying to make de-extinction a reality, will most probably be wasted on a failed project, or result in the species not having any place to go. De-extinction would also bring up a lot of problematic situations for today's ecosystems and environments. Finally, even though de-extinction isnt the best idea, the research being put on bringing back these species, could most certainly result in saving several species that are endangered because of our damage to their homes. This is why I believe that de-extinction isn't a good idea.