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Mammoth de-extinction is bad conservation
- JoeAltmaier 2y agoSure; but so is pretty much anything we do with animals. Is it worse than the cattle industry? Worse than re-introducing wolves to Yellowstone? Worse than engineering mosquitoes to be sterile? They all have their cost. This cost is measured in African elephant abuse. A sound argument. The ecosystem argument, not so much as they also elaborate competently on. Let's admit, the single reason to 'bring back' the Mammoth is, it's cool and a tremendous publicity scheme for ecological efforts. That alone, may be reason enough. And, anything that brings in the dollars is going to happen. Argue all you want, about ecology and seed dispersal and other 'real' effects. The money a Mammoth park would bring, the imaginations stimulated and the youth inspired, could be worth it all on it's own.
- nemomarx 2y agowait what's wrong with the wolves? rewilding via wolves seems to be good for everyone except ranchers?
- eesmith 2y agoFrom this article: > Conservationists often claim that the reason to save charismatic species is that they are necessary for the sound functioning of the ecosystems that support humankind. Perhaps the most well-known of these stories is about the ecological changes wolves drove when they were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park. Through some 25 peer-reviewed papers, two ecologists claimed to demonstrate that the reappearance of wolves in Yellowstone changed the behavior of elk, causing them to spend less time browsing the saplings of trees near rivers. This led to a chain of cause and effect (a trophic cascade) that affected beavers, birds, and even the flow of the river. A YouTube video on the phenomenon called “How Wolves Change Rivers” has been viewed more than 45 million times. > But other scientists were unable to replicate these findings—they discovered that the original statistics were flawed, and that human hunters likely contributed to elk population declines in Yellowstone.Ultimately, a 2019 review of the evidence by a team of researchers concluded that “the most robust science suggests trophic cascades are not evident in Yellowstone.”
- nemomarx 2y agoyeah but that's just the benefits being overstated, not a downside that I can see? and it it led to less required human hunting of elk or deer without any other effects I think that would still be beneficial in the future.
- eesmith 2y agoI'm one of those urban people with no interactions with wolves, which statistically means I agree with you. Ranchers, however, are not the only ones against wolf reintroduction. Hunters want to shoot elk or deer, and see wolves as a threat to game species. Rural land owners don't want the government telling them what they can or cannot do on their own land (ie, shoot wolves). Some think it's a waste of money, for something which isn't that important. If there were a tropic cascade as described, fewer people would think it's not worth it.
- master_crab 2y agoArguably, the only good conservation involves removing all humans forever. Given how that’s not a workable or good idea (from a self-preservation perspective) everything else is open to interpretation. (Not an argument for maximalist interpretations)
- graemep 2y agoThat also implies there is no loss from removing everything uniquely human from the world. More fundamentally, what is the goal? What do we want to maximise?
- theoreticalmal 2y agoMaximize crushing your enemies, seeing them driven before you, and hearing the lamentations of their women.
- weard_beard 2y agoBeauty.
- nkrisc 2y agoFamously subjective.
- weard_beard 2y agoIts the nearest neighbor to everyone's best interest and most interpretations are preservationist.
- card_zero 2y agoWell, is the world more beautiful with mammoths, or without? They do have lovely strawberry blonde hair.
- dullcrisp 2y agoPaper clips
- tyre 2y agoWhat is bad about engineering mosquitos to be sterile?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- mionhe 2y agoLots of things eat them, so we're killing off a link in the food chain, would be the argument.
- bjelkeman-again 2y agoPossibly better than the alternatives. Like use of DDT. But everything seems to have a drawback.
- sitkack 2y agoMosquitoes bring nutrients back down the food chain, making it a food graph instead of a food tree.
- andrewflnr 2y agoIt's a silly argument IMO. There are so many mosquito species we don't care about, and so many other small insects that provide similar food, that eliminating the handful of species that literally kill humans would barely cause a blip in the food chain.
- darth_avocado 2y agoNot at all a silly argument. The human species is extremely bad at understanding the delicate balance the nature is in and extremely bad at estimating how much we know about nature. We don’t even know all the insect species that exist, yet we are comfortable telling others that they will find other similar food. It’s the kind of confidence aliens would have observing humans eating lettuce and assuming we’d be fine with grazing grass if they take all the leafy vegetables away.
- dyauspitr 2y agoWhy is the cattle industry in the same vein as reintroducing wolves?
- JoeAltmaier 2y ago"Things we do with animals" You don't want to call the Mammoth effort 'ecological', then compare it to other such animal impacts we've engineered. Like cattle.
- LinuxBender 2y agoLet's admit, the single reason to 'bring back' the Mammoth is, it's cool and a tremendous publicity scheme for ecological efforts. That alone, may be reason enough. Don't encourage them. Before we know it they will bring back dinosaurs ... some quote about "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."
- perrygeo 2y agoThe conservation biology world has some interesting philosophical problems to wrestle with. On one hand, despite the best efforts, biodiversity loss is accelerating. We're losing habitats and species faster than earth has seen in 60 million years. Ecosystems are so degraded that they require intervention. On the other hand, what sort of intervention is appropriate? Are we trying to conserve things as is today, or restore to a vision of the pre-industrial landscale, or the pre-agricultural landscape? Or do we try to build a new ecosystem to handle anticipated climate shifts? Do we introduce new species? Do we focus on all biomass, just flora or fauna, insects, fungi too? Do we bring back extinct keystone species like the mammoth? There is no ethical compass that can tell us the "right" intervention.
- tuna74 2y ago"On one hand, despite the best efforts, biodiversity loss is accelerating. We're losing habitats and species faster than earth has seen in 60 million years. Ecosystems are so degraded that they require intervention." If an alien was looking at the earth they would conclude that humans are actively trying to destroy the eco-systems we live in for just a tiny bit more profit than we would have made otherwise.
- moosey 2y agoI don't aliens that could come here would recognize profit as something real. They would see us destroying the world to eat meat. To pointlessly travel at high speeds. To drive cars around in pointless errands. To collect pointless knick knacks for social stature. The penguin gives a stone to his mate. The human buys an F150 to attract social attention and a mate. To a hypothetical alien species, the gap between the intelligence of these two species is not large. Collectively, we act in accordance with our biology.
- perrygeo 2y agoThere's good evidence to suggest that most mammals and other K-selected species (long lived with few offspring) will always expand to fill the productive capacity of their niche, and keep doing so until negative feedback pressure kicks in. Consider the reindeer on St Matthews Island. 20 of them were introduced in 1944 and left to fend for themselves. With plenty of food and no natural predators, by 1963 there were 6000 reindeer (300x population boom!). By 1966 the population had dropped to 42. By 1980, no reindeer left. Mammals seem particularly prone to this "eat everything is sight and multiply" strategy. Which works, until it doesn't - the herd migrates, adapts, or the population collapses. The problem with the human enterprise is that we've gotten really darn good at engineering solutions to these negative feedback pressures. There's nothing (yet) that can restrain our growth. Which means we're in a St. Matthew's Reindeer situation - dwindling resource base, exploding population, and nowhere left to go.
- chr1 2y ago> But the study raises lots of questions: is it possible to boost these herbivores’ populations across the whole northern latitudes? If so, why do we need mammoths at all—why not just use species that already exist, which would surely be cheaper? Many videos from https://pleistocenepark.org/ https://pleistocenepark.org/ explain, that at the start they are removing large trees with bulldozer, something that mammoths could do and other herbivores do not do effectively. Sadly this kind of inattention to detail and shallow arguments are typical to people who hold views similar to this article. The authors complains that Colossal doesn't genetically engineer trees, but if someone was to develop trees that could grow floating in open sea, they were going to complain how this unnatural tree are bad and will change the ocean ecosystem. Mammoth de-extinction is indeed bad conservation, because it is much better than merely conservation, it is restoration, and reengineering of empty lands into something much more useful for us, and for other animals.
- wileydragonfly 2y agoThis has been 2 years away for 40 years. It’s never happening.
- snozolli 2y agoIf we have the opportunity to revive a species that humans exterminated, and said species doesn't present any immediate and obvious danger to humanity, then we absolutely should. Worst case (according to the article's arguments) we get depressed, ill mammoths that actually damage the ecosystem. So exterminate them again, I guess, and try again when the science improves? Nothing was lost.
- theoreticalmal 2y agoI find it hard to agree that the humanity that is currently un-exterminating mammoth is the same humanity that exterminated them in the first place. Genetically, sure, but our culture and values and technology seems so fantastically different that I don’t see the two as being the same.
- snozolli 2y agoHow is that relevant?
- spwa4 2y agoBut it provides the necessary training so humanity can be brought back from extinction at the end of Trump's term.
- odyssey7 2y agoI'm reminded of the multiple projects to restore the American Chestnut. Unlike the mammoth, people generally seem to agree that it's a good idea to bring these majestic wonders back to their range, but with multiple options available after decades of work, last I checked stakeholders couldn't agree on the best way to do it. This hybridization approach seemingly would draw the same sorts of debates, even if the more obvious ethical ramifications weren't there. We're talking about a human-created species that is neither mammoth nor elephant, but something in-between, with trade-offs comprising value judgements and other details that are not fully understood.
- tim333 2y agoIt may be bad conservation but it would be kind of cool. I'm not sure you can conserve things totally. Even if all humans disappeared, the earth would keep changing as it always has done - 99.9% of species are extinct because they keep dying out and new ones generated.