Promise and peril
tricky part of going from a captive breeding bird to a live, thriving population in the wild,” she said.
Passenger pigeons once numbered in the billions, blackening the skies and inspiring naturalists like John James Audubon, John Muir and Aldo Leopold. They had vanished by the first World War, victims of hunting and habitat loss.
But resurrected flocks reintroduced into a modern environment could be an invasive species, noted Andrew Torrance of the University of Kansas Law School. They also would be genetically modified organisms, subject to federal regulation.
“This could make reintroduction a challenge, under current law,” said Alex Camacho, director of UC Irvine’s Center for Land, Environment and Natural Resources. “The Endangered Species Act did not contemplate revival of extinct species.”
Some conservationists say bringing back lost species will distract from conservation of living species in danger of extinction. Why work to restore the woolly mammoth, they ask, when poachers are killing off African elephants?
“I am concerned that people will not work hard enough to keep species from going extinct,” said Terry Root of Stanford’s Woods Institute for the Environment.
Others ask: Is there still a role for these species? How would an animal fare in a world much different from the one it left?
But there is also hope that revival would help restore the world’s diminishing biodiversity.
Extinction may not be forever, owing to such fast-moving scientific progress, said conference organiser Hank Greely, director of the Center for Law and the Biosciences.
“My current view is that it is worth pursuing in a careful and prudent way,” he said.
Given California’s acrimonious battles over allocation of water for wildlife and humans, some residents may not welcome the return of now-extinct fish species, such as the thick-tail chub, said Chuck Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, who cautioned he was not speaking for his agency.
What about the California grizzly bear – “Do I bring that back?” he asked.
“At some point we will be doing this ... we’ve rounded a corner. We need to stop worrying about theoreticals and start discussing how it will happen,” he said. – San Jose Mercury News/McClatchy-Tribune Information Services