A project to revive long-gone species is a sideshow to the real extinction crisis
Yvetta Fedorova
“We will get woolly mammoths back.”
So vowed environmentalist Stewart Brand at the TED conference in Long Beach, Calif., in February in laying out his vision for reviving extinct species.
“Humans have made a huge hole in nature in the last 10,000 years,” Brand asserted.
“We have the ability now—and maybe the moral obligation—to repair some of the damage.”
Just a few years ago such de-extinction was the purview of science fiction.
Ironically, the de-extinction conference immediately followed the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) meeting in Bangkok, which underscored just how devastating the trade has been.
At this rate, the species could disappear in two decades.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-efforts-bring-extinct-species-back-from-dead-miss-point/
Yvetta Fedorova
“We will get woolly mammoths back.”
So vowed environmentalist Stewart Brand at the TED conference in Long Beach, Calif., in February in laying out his vision for reviving extinct species.
“Humans have made a huge hole in nature in the last 10,000 years,” Brand asserted.
“We have the ability now—and maybe the moral obligation—to repair some of the damage.”
Just a few years ago such de-extinction was the purview of science fiction.
Ironically, the de-extinction conference immediately followed the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) meeting in Bangkok, which underscored just how devastating the trade has been.
At this rate, the species could disappear in two decades.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-efforts-bring-extinct-species-back-from-dead-miss-point/
