For instance, do we bring back the Giant Moa of New Zealand because the native Maori islanders, upon arriving on the island, drove it to extinction out of primal fear? Or, do we call the intrusion of the early settlers a natural progression of survival and evolution?

As much of an environmentalist as I am it seems to me that if we were to glue all of the leaves back onto the tree that we had ripped off, we may be adhering dead leaves to an otherwise healthy tree, never giving it room to bud.

In the particular case of the Ibex Mountain Goat, they, like all other species of mountain goat so infamously are, are extremely stubborn and ill-adaptable. They don’t breed unless under ideal conditions, their diet is scarce and extremely exclusive, they don’t do well in the company of human contact even the slightest, and in short, they don’t survive well through much of anything, so it’s no surprise to me that the population would not be able to sustain itself at 30 for more than a few decades.

As to the suggestion of Thylacine breeding I had always thought that myself (in fact I was surprised to see this article, I didn’t know cloning of endangered species was a breakthough, I thought it was available technology for some time now…), but I wonder what genetic material is still valid for cloning after 70 years. After all, certainly no specimen was cryogenically frozen, and unless any of the fur particles or any of the preserved pickled specimens retain completely in tact DNA (I’ll admit I have not the faintest idea the impact of pickling on the DNA of a body), it would be difficult to bring back the Thylacine, even with the most advanced technology, tragically.

As for bringing back by genetic engineering now extinct populations even with the absence of their original habitat, I don’t think that the absence of the ecosystems we associate with them is all that important. Animals are adaptive and there are many examples of animals surprising their researchers by finding themselves able to survive in habitat that would not have been considered compatible. That adaptability is the wild card in the game and science can’t bank on it or predict it, but nobody who watches with interest can ignore it or deny its existence.

More is better!

And the day will come, probably not in my lifetime but maybe sooner than we think, when humans are ready to migrate from Spaceship Earth and populate other planets. Cloned embryos could be used to “seed” those new worlds with life, giving species new habitats in which they can continue to survive and evolve.

I understand wanting to have this one in our toolbox, cloning can be a good option in some cases. It is worthwhile. But really, cloning an animal isn’t going to do much good if we don’t address the underlying reasons for why the animal went extinct in the first place. What good is cloning if those factors are not fixed? Animals and their habitat are intrinsically linked, you cannot have one function healthily without the other. If these problems with habitat and human influence aren’t rectified, cloning will be just be at best a temporary fix, the animals will very likely just go extinct again and what then? We clone again, and around and around we go. It’s like putting a band aid on a very serious wound, it stops the blood for now, but doesn’t do much to mend the reason why you are bleeding in the first place.

What good is having the animal resurrected if it has nowhere to go? You can clone animals all you want, but if things like habitat loss, pollution, and human interference aren’t fixed, the only thing these cloned animals are going to be good for is zoos, where we can see the kind of biodiversity that once inhabited our planet in the wild. It seems to me that cloning without any solid plans for conservation, habitat preservation or ensuring that the same thing doesn’t happen again is folly. I tend to think cloning should be a last resort, and even then only in conjunction with some plan to make sure these animals and their habitat can survive.

Cloning is something for the toolbox, but not a foundation upon which to build.