HORNS OF A DILEMMA
Axel moehrenschlager had the opportunity to meet sudan, the last male northern white rhino on earth. the calgary zoo’s director of conservation says playing god with animals, by bringing extinct species back to life, presents a quandary.
It is a global issue posing a mammoth question for mankind.
Should humans, in their desire to play God on Earth, work tirelessly to bring species back from extinction while similarly continuing to turn a blind eye to the carnage being inflicted on today ’s animals and plants which are disappearing at a rate of at least three a day?
That question envelops one Calgarian in particular. Axel Moehrenschlager heads Calgary Zoo’s species conservation efforts and is a recognized global authority in the field.
During the last four years, he has chaired the species survival commission’s reintroduction group for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature — his appointment to the position in itself is an international recognition of the work the zoo has done in helping animals on the brink of extinction.
That work began decades ago when the zoo took on the daunting task of trying to prevent the whooping crane from going literally the way of the dodo bird. In 1941 there were only 15 cranes alive, clinging to existence in Wood Buffalo National Park in northern Alberta, due to hunting and loss of habitat.
Today, thanks to a rescue and breeding program first introduced by the zoo, there are about 300 whooping cranes in the wild. That success led to Calgary becoming a hub for other rescue efforts on species both local and worldwide.
Only this week, ongoing efforts to save the threatened burrowing owl were boosted by a partnership between Calgary Zoo and the military base at Suffield when eight tiny one-year-old owlets were released onto the base’s protected land.
Similarly, the zoo is in the forefront of work to boost numbers of threatened native animals such as leopard frogs, swift foxes, prairie dogs and black-footed ferrets, while in the international arena Calgary teams are busy in projects to save creatures such as the mountain bongo, lemurs, antelope and hippos across Africa.
Moehrenschlager has helped design guidelines for such programs through listing pertinent questions for those groups considering aiding threatened species: Are the reasons for the decline in a population understood? What is the point of boosting numbers if the habitat can no longer sustain the animal? Would relocating to another area threaten other species? Meanwhile, those and other questions also relate to the controversy surrounding de-extinction, said Moehrenschlager.
“You could create something that looks like what used to exist before, but because you don’t have the exact same genetic composition you cannot be sure that it will act the same way, if it will be able to reproduce the same way and whether it might be a threat to the ecosystem or even to people themselves,” he said.
“As to the broad question of is it possible to bring an animal back from a species that has gone extinct the simple answer is yes, because it has already happened,” added Moehrenschlager.
A type of Spanish mountain ibex went extinct a few years ago and scientists implanted samples of the dead creature’s DNA within a similar species. In 400 efforts, about 30 pregnancies resulted and eventually one animal was born. It lasted five minutes before its lungs collapsed.
The host animal’s DNA does not mix with the re-engineered embryo and simply remains a carrier until the re-engineered embryo reaches term. However, scientists are still unable to produce an exact copy of the extinct animal from its DNA, so they must fill any missing DNA with strands from a similar animal. As an example, reintroducing the passenger pigeon, which went extinct a century ago, would require splicing its DNA with missing links from a dove.
This is why Moehrenschlager and colleagues describe any potentially de-extinct animals that eventually are successfully produced as proxies of the original.
This, in turn, raises ethical and moral questions for mankind.
“You have no idea how much I’ve thought about these things,” he said.
“There is a high degree of human intervention in this and some people would debate that on moral and ethical grounds. You can look at his either way: that this is terrible because you are playing God in some way, while others would say we are the cause of these extinctions so it is our moral imperative to try and bring them back.
“Fundamentally, it comes down to a question that faces humanity. We are an incredibly intelligent species and we can come up with technologies and develop tools to take us to conceptual places we have never been before. But that brings us to a place where we have to ask, as humans, just because we can do something does that mean we should do it?”
Moehrenschlager added that is why the same questions to be asked before trying to save a threatened species apply to attempts in bringing animals such as the famed mammoth back from extinction.
“Would we just be tinkering to see what amazing creations humans can make? You might eventually have menageries created sitting somewhere in captivity as it was with zoos a hundred years ago. It would be cruel to do so and it could be a threat to the ecosystems that are no longer suitable for them. Or, in some cases, perhaps even a threat to humans either directly or indirectly by being excellent carriers of disease.”
Moehrenschlager acknowledges the lure of trying to re-engineer a mammoth, for example. But there could be better uses of time, money and expertise.
“If people feel the desire to bring them back then I would say, ‘Wouldn’t you invest your energy in trying to prevent the extinction of species that are rapidly being lost every day instead of thinking of bringing back those that have disappeared already?’
“I suggest it is probably a thousand more times effective, stopping extinction rather than deextinction."