[leidenfrost]

I don't see the point of de-extinction other than naturist nostalgia.

The problem around de-extinction is that you can't just shoehorn a new species into a habitat that already filled the void left by a past extinction.

If some marsupial in Australia got extinct because it was replaced by feral cats, then that habitat won't welcome that marsupial anymore. And there's nothing we can do about it. Even if we somehow people organize themselves to hunt all the feral cats to extinction, it will either be replaced by new post-domestic cats or either some other, equally capable and already existing predator.

The habitat wasn't destroyed nor hurt in anyway. It just changed. It changed the same way it changed when all non-avian dinosaurs got extinct and then replaced with mammals and birds that filled the void left by them.

[DennisP]

Sometimes the holes don't get filled. Mammoths in northern steppes are one example, and getting them back would actually be pretty helpful.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/can-bringing-b...

[patall]

Another great example are Avocados, Papayas, Zapotes, Honey-locusts and other American large-seeded fruit that have no known seed dispersal mechanism anymore. All the big mammals that like giant sloth (and again, the mammoth) that would eat the fruit and later poop the seed somewhere else are gone and it's kind of a surprise that so many of those survived the last 13,000 years (and nobody knows what we may have lost during that time).

[patall]

I fully disagree. There are so many examples of animals that once de-facto disappeared (like huge sea-lion colonies, same for turtles, reintroduced american and/or european bison, black footed ferret, arabian oryx, hermit ibis, wolves, ...) and then came back, to restore their original biological role. You cannot release a mammoth into central park and hope that it just works. But nobody is trying to do that.

[Ensorceled]

> The habitat wasn't destroyed nor hurt in anyway. It just changed.

That's an interesting way to describe the massive effect humans are having on pretty much every habitat on the planet ... "It just changed."

[leidenfrost]

Because in the end, that's really it. Even if it's due to human intervention and even if that makes us feel sad.

At some point, a new habitat will reach a new balance with our introduced species and there's no going back.

And yes, there may be less diversity in species all over the world (for the time being) thanks to that. But once the new species learn to reproduce and survive in a new place, then that is the "new" state of the habitat.

I agree we should strive to not fuck up our place on the planet. But habitats will change whether we like it or not.

Maybe in a million years feral cats in Australia will differentiate themselves with the ones in Europe.

[joshuahedlund]

> At some point, a new habitat will reach a new balance with our introduced species and there's no going back.

> And yes, there may be less diversity in species all over the world (for the time being) thanks to that. But once the new species learn to reproduce and survive in a new place, then that is the "new" state of the habitat.

Yeah but won't that be just as true of a re-introduced de-extincted species? Mammoths / mammoth-ish elephants might change the new equilibrium in Siberia just like it changed when they were extincted in the first place... maybe the change could even be for the good. Why is the latter just accepted but the former is not?

There's this weird status quo bias that seems to say "ecosystems re-adjusting if humans deliberately re-introduce a species is artificial and must be bad" while also saying "ecosystems re-adjusting when humans literally do everything else that humans do is somehow natural or fated"

[leidenfrost]

Can we really re-introduce a de-extincted species?

IMHO we are either overestimating our potential at consciously controlling the natural world, or either underestimating the complexity of nature.

While I love technology as a part of being human and something that definitely sets up apart from other primates (even the other tool making hominids), I find it awkward to see organizations attempting to make planetary artificial changes without even being sure if we can survive as a technology-capable species at all without turning the planet into a boiler.

E.g.: We should still make sure that future generations will be able to enjoy technological wonders like computation without having to throw toxic byproducts into the rivers and seas.

[anonymous_sorry]

Human societies are coming to value and protect biodiversity. Extending your argument this is just another change in the habitat, one for which native species may be better adapted. Judging by the rules on what you're allowed to bring in to the country, Australia now appears to take invasive species very seriously.

[ElevenLathe]

I can imagine de-extinction and other genetic engineering techniques being useful to increase the amount of diversity in many habitats, which will theoretically give them a better chance of weathering huge environmental changes (as natural selection has a broader base of genes to work against). Since we need the biosphere to continue existing in a pretty narrow range of configurations in order to keep us alive (for example, we probably don't have the technology yet to sustain our civilization in the face of the whole planet becoming a desert, or not providing enough oxygen to breathe without artificial assistance), this might be a useful technique.

[some_random]

You can say things in a value neutral way and have them still be true.

[Ensorceled]

> > The habitat wasn't destroyed nor hurt in anyway.

> You can say things in a value neutral way and have them still be true.

How is that statement "value neutral"?

[mrits]

I think my dog prefers her swimming pool and heart worm medication so she can live more than a few years. Humans have a negative effect on some ecosystems but it seems inevitable that viruses,fungi,etc will eventually take over without our intervention.

[kybernetyk]

Which isn't wrong. As humans are the product of evolution, humans changing habitats is just natural change.

[msm_]

This is technically correct, but I think this misses the point. Unhabitable future Earth with molten icebergs and polluted gray sky may, technically, be a "natural change" and a consequence of "natural" human actions.

But we, humans, want to avoid this future. The same goes for causing extinction of most wild animal species.

Edit: to expand on GP's point: imagine your house burned down, and somebody said "> Your property wasn't destroyed nor hurt in anyway. It just changed". Yeah, all the atoms are still there, but it changed in a way we find undesirable.

[brokenkebaby]

The analogy doesn't work for the nature. It already went through very drastic changes, at least some of them attributed to activities of living organisms, and while it was bad for some species, it was good for others. It's even more so when we're talking about less than cataclysmic changes. It's hard to find any clear logic why disappearance of dodo bird is bad, and e.g. extinction of horses in America is ok.

[leidenfrost]

Global warming will definitely lead to mass extinctions.

But the opposite does not work that way.

Even the most optimistic outcome with the lowest amount of warming, or even none at all, will be accompanied with a drastic change in habitats around the world.

[Ensorceled]

You can defend all sorts of things with that reasoning ... "humans are tribal by nature, so war is just natural"

[dividedbyzero]

Bringing back beaver and wolves to areas where they've been wiped out is functionally the same and shows that often such niches don't get filled all that fast. The replacement for wolves has been hunters, beavers had no replacement. Usually when either gets reintroduced, the local ecosystem functions quite a bit better, there has been quite a bit of backlash by hunters because it turns out wolves do a substantial part of their work and there is less need to control deer populations. Might not work in all cases, but even if partial restoration is an option, having that genome around is a good thing in itself, as life thrives off diversity. Reducing genetic diversity hampers an ecosystem's ability to adapt to change. We have a lot of ecosystems that have been decimated to the point of being close to unviable, and we're losing keystone species all the time. Fixing what drove them over the cliff (hard if it's feral cats, easier if it's a specific pesticide, disease, hunting, or habitat fragmentation) and subsequent reintroduction may well prove a pretty important strategy to keep the world a place that humans can thrive in, especially given the predicted decrease in world population by the end of the century which may result in renaturation of swathes of land.

[mo_42]

I see two points: 1. scientific curiosity, and 2. people might enjoy seeing these animals.

Also, humans are terraforming this planet anyway so I don’t see a reason not to do it in a way to make room for previously extinct species.

Some other discussion could be if those animals would be happy living. Maybe we will have to ask whether we de-extinct Homo Erectus. Apparently, we're not even asking this for animals we eat…

[GalenErso]

I see another point which ties with your second: 3. Money

"And we can charge anything we want, 2,000 a day, 10,000 a day, and people will pay it. And then there's the merchandise..."

[kurthr]

That's how it really works. They'll be show animals.

"Think how many ideas were lost, and eventually forgotten, when those animals went extinct... like what did they taste like?"

[klyrs]

3. The dodo went extinct because, by all accounts, they were delicious

[timeon]

> to make room for previously extinct species

There is barely room for contemporary species.

[ethanbond]

After accounting for the enormous swaths of monoculture land required to grow plants to feed animals to slaughter for human consumption, sure.

If we can figure out how to reduce that though, there’s plenty of land.

[antichronology]

I think the apt comparison here is landing on the moon. Although overtly it carries little value, the technologies developed along the way are very valuable.

As the article mentions improved fertilization, more accurate genome editing, and advances in in-vitro gastrulation are the real prize.

To me there is also something profoundly sad about the loss of molecular information with each extinct species. Having a simple hope, perhaps naive, to reverse this process is comforting.

[Bronze_Colossus]

In regarding the Mammoth there is some who claims that bringing the Mammoth back would help recreate the northern subarctic steppe grassland ecosystem that flourished in Siberia during the last glacial period. This would increase the animal density in Siberia and so on.

[mc32]

It's unlikely these resurrected species will inhabit their ancestral habitats but rather, like Jurassic Park, satisfy human curiosity and entertainment for nature itself does not care one way or the other.

Just think, eventually and extinct species zoo garden, not unlike JP, except more tame species... maybe. It would be a destination attraction for sure.

[timeon]

That sounds bit perverse.

[ignoramous]

The habitat may also come to be dominated by a bully species due to human intervention (think: plastic pollution causing Turtle deaths and thus rise in Jellyfish population) which may result in extinctions of a variety of other species.

[andrewclunn]

Rich people spend money on a fancy boat, nobody gives a damn. Rich people spend their money on some charity or philanthropic endeavor, "Shame! You should spend that money on THIS charity instead!"

[LatteLazy]

I don't think that's true. Leaving aside that feral cats will just re-extinct the species, whatever other species has filled it's niches is very unlikely to be as good as that as the original.

[BiteCode_dev]

If someone went to set your house on fire, empty your bank account and kill your family, I'm pretty sure "your life wasn't destroyed nor hurt in anyway. It just changed" would not be well accepted by you.

[carapace]

Are you an ecologist?