Abstract
This chapter surveys and critically evaluates all the main arguments both for and against de-extinction. It presents a qualified defence of the claim that conservationists should embrace de-extinction. It ends with a list of do’s and don’ts for conservationist de-extinction projects.
Keywords
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
“The gene is the basic unit of selfishness” (Dawkins, 1976, p. 39). This being so, could we not identify a species with its genepool, and in this way substantiate the claim that a species ‘wants’ to remain extant and perpetuate itself into the future? No, for in the first place what is in the selfish interests of an individual gene is often sharply detrimental to the interests of other genes and to long-term survival prospects of the genepool as a whole. The interests of the genes therefore don’t add up to any coherent volition at the genepool level. In the second place, attributing selfishness to genes is just a useful figure of speech, that involves anthropomorphising a segment of DNA. Genes are ‘selfish’ and have ‘interests’ only in the extremely deflationary sense that self-perpetuating chain letters are selfish and have interests.
- 2.
See Jebari (2016) and Cohen (2014) for attempts to show that we owe a moral duty to species we have exterminated, a duty that requires us to resurrect them. Cohen acknowledges the profound difficulties confronting this view, writing: “The potential objections to [my] analysis … are legion. My aim was to show that the initially absurd-sounding idea of a duty of de-extinction deserves a second thought” (p. 172).
- 3.
This assumption is not needed by proponents of the justice argument in the special case that our generation is responsible for the extinction, but in practice proponents of the justice argument are usually arguing for the resurrection of species that went extinct long ago.
- 4.
The creation of de-extinct organisms for zoos or for the exotic pet industry would be of substantial conservation benefit only if some of the created organisms became available for rewilding (although see Archer (2013) for a contrary view). Depending on the species, it could also raise obvious animal welfare objections.
- 5.
There are some time constraints. Ideally a species will be resurrected sooner rather than later, especially when fast-paced environmental or ecological changes would make rewilding the species rapidly more difficult the longer the delay (Robert, Thévenin, Princé, Sarrazin, & Clavel, 2017). Another reason to resurrect sooner rather than later is so that more generations of people can benefit from the species’ de-extinction.
References
Archer, M. A. (2013). Second chance for Tasmanian tigers and fantastic frogs. Presented at the TEDx DeExtinction/National Geographic, Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://longnow.org/revive/tedxdeextinction/
Benirschke, K. (1984). The frozen zoo concept. Zoo Biology, 3(4), 325–328. https://doi.org/10.1002/zoo.1430030405
Bennett, J. R., Maloney, R. F., Steeves, T. E., Brazill-Boast, J., Possingham, H. P., & Seddon, P. J. (2017, March 1). Spending limited resources on de-extinction could lead to net biodiversity loss. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 1(4), 53.
Blockstein, D. E. (2017). We can’t bring back the passenger pigeon: The ethics of deception around de-extinction. Ethics, Policy & Environment, 20(1), 33–37. https://doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2017.1291826
Botkin, D. B. (1992). Discordant harmonies: A new ecology for the twenty-first century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Brand, S. (2013). The dawn of de-extinction: Are you ready? Presented at the TED, Long Beach, CA. Retrieved from http://www.ted.com/talks/stewart_brand_the_dawn_of_de_extinction_are_you_ready.html
Brand, S. (2014). De-extinction debate: Should we bring back the woolly mammoth? Yale Environment, 360. Retrieved from http://e360.yale.edu/features/the_case_for_de-extinction_why_we_should_bring_back_the_woolly_mammoth
Brown, S. (2016, July 28). Heath hen tops de-extinction list. Vineyard Gazette.
Burney, D. A., Juvik, J. O., Burney, L. P., & Diagne, T. (2012). Can unwanted suburban tortoises rescue native Hawaiian plants? The Tortoise, 104–115.
Callaway, E. (2016). Geneticists aim to save rare rhino. Nature, 533, 20–21.
Campbell, D. I. (2016). A case for resurrecting lost species—Review essay of Beth Shapiro’s, “How to clone a mammoth: The science of de-extinction”. Biology and Philosophy, 31(5), 747–759. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10539-016-9534-2
Carlin, N. F., Wurman, I., & Zakim, T. (2013). How to permit your mammoth: Some legal implications of de-extinction. Stanford Environmental Law Journal, 33(1), 3–57.
Caro, T. (2010). Conservation by proxy: Indicator, umbrella, keystone, flagship, and other surrogate species. Washington, DC: Island Press.
Chadwick, R. F. (1982). Cloning. Philosophy, 57(220), 201–209. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0031819100050774
Chapman, A. (2005). Genetic engineering: The unnatural argument. Techné: Research in Philosophy and Technology, 9(2), 81–93.
Cohen, S. (2014). The ethics of de-extinction. NanoEthics, 8(2), 165–178.
Cottrell, S., Jensen, J. L., & Peck, S. L. (2014). Resuscitation and resurrection: The ethics of cloning cheetahs, mammoths, and Neanderthals. Life Sciences, Society and Policy, 10(1), 3. https://doi.org/10.1186/2195-7819-10-3
Cowen, T. (2003). Policing nature. Environmental Ethics, 25(2), 169–182.
Crist, E. (2008). Cloning in restorative perspective. In M. Hall (Ed.), Restoration and history: The search for a usable environmental past (pp. 284–292). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Dawkins, R. (1976). The selfish gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dawkins, R. (1995). River out of Eden: A Darwinian view of life. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.
Diehm, C. (2017). De-extinction and deep questions about species conservation. Ethics, Policy & Environment, 20(1), 25–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2017.1291827
Donlan, C. J. (2014). De-extinction in a crisis discipline. Frontiers of Biogeography, 6(1), 25–28.
Donlan, C. J., Berger, J., Bock, C. E., Bock, J. H., Burney, D. A., Estes, J. A., … Greene, H. W. (2006). Pleistocene rewilding: An optimistic agenda for twenty-first century conservation. The American Naturalist, 168(5), 660–681. https://doi.org/10.1086/508027
Ehrlich, P., & Ehrlich, A. (2014). The case against de-extinction: It’s a fascinating but dumb idea. Yale Environment, 360. Retrieved from http://e360.yale.edu/features/the_case_against_de-extinction_its_a_fascinating_but_dumb_idea
Hansford, D. (2016). Protecting paradise: 1080 and the fight to save New Zealand’s wildlife. Nelson, NZ: Potton & Burton.
Iacona, G., Maloney, R. F., Chadès, I., Bennett, J. R., Seddon, P. J., & Possingham, H. P. (2017). Prioritizing revived species: What are the conservation management implications of de-extinction? Functional Ecology, 31(5), 1041–1048. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.12720
IUCN. (2017). The IUCN red list of threatened species. Version 2017-1. IUCN. Retrieved from www.iucnredlist.org
IUCN/SSC. (2013). Guidelines for reintroductions and other conservation translocations (Version 1.0. Gland). Switzerland: IUCN Species Survival Commission.
IUCN/SSC. (2016). Guiding principles on creating proxies of extinct species (Version 1.0. Gland). Switzerland: IUCN Species Survival Commission.
Jebari, K. (2016). Should extinction be forever? Philosophy and Technology, 29(3), 211–222.
Jones, K. E. (2014). From dinosaurs to dodos: Who could and should we de-extinct? Frontiers of Biogeography, 6(1), 20–24.
Jørgensen, D. (2013). Reintroduction and de-extinction. Bioscience, 63(9), 719–720. https://doi.org/10.1525/bio.2013.63.9.6
Kasperbauer, T. J. (2017). Should we bring back the passenger pigeon? The ethics of de-extinction. Ethics, Policy & Environment, 20(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2017.1291831
Kohl, P. (2017). Using de-extinction to create extinct species proxies; Natural history not included. Ethics, Policy & Environment, 20(1), 15–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2017.1291832
Mason, C. (2017). The unnaturalness objection to de-extinction: A critical evaluation. Animal Studies Journal, 6(1), 40–60.
McCarthy, D. P., Donald, P. F., Scharlemann, J. P. W., Buchanan, G. M., Balmford, A., Green, J. M. H., … Butchart, S. H. M. (2012). Financial costs of meeting global biodiversity conservation targets: Current spending and unmet needs. Science, 338(6109), 946–949. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1229803
McCauley, D. J., Hardesty-Moore, M., Halpern, B. S., & Young, H. S. (2017). A mammoth undertaking: Harnessing insight from functional ecology to shape de-extinction priority setting. Functional Ecology, 31(5), 1003–1011. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.12728
McGowan, P. J. K., Traylor-Holzer, K., & Leus, K. (2017). IUCN guidelines for determining when and how ex situ management should be used in species conservation. Conservation Letters, 10(3), 361–366. https://doi.org/10.1111/conl.12285
McMahan, J. (2010a, September 19). The meat eaters. The New York Times.
McMahan, J. (2010b, September 28). Predators: A response. The New York Times.
Mill, J. S., & O’Grady, J. (1963). Collected works of John Stuart Mill. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Minteer, B. A. (2014). Is it right to reverse extinction? Nature, 509(7500), 261.
Minteer, B. A. (2015). The perils of de-extinction. Minding Nature, 8(1), 11–17.
Naess, A. (1991). Should we try to relieve clear cases of suffering in nature? Pan Ecology, 6, 1–5.
Nes, E. H. van, & Scheffer, M. (2004). Large species shifts triggered by small forces. The American Naturalist, 164(2), 255–266. https://doi.org/10.1086/422204
Norman, R. (1996). Interfering with nature. Journal of Applied Philosophy, 13(1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-5930.1996.tb00144.x
Nussbaum, M. (2006). Frontiers of justice: Disability, nationality, species membership. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press.
O’Connor, M. R. (2015). Resurrection science: Conservation, de-extinction and the precarious future of wild things. New York: St. Martin’s Press.
Pickett, S. T. A. (2013). The flux of nature: Changing worldviews and inclusive concepts. In R. Rozzi, S. T. A. Pickett, C. Palmer, J. J. Armesto, & J. B. Callicott (Eds.), Linking ecology and ethics for a changing world: Values, philosophy, and action (pp. 265–279). Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7470-4_23
Pimm, S. (2013). The case against species revival. National Geographic. Retrieved from http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/03/130312--deextinction-conservation-animals-science-extinction-biodiversity-habitat-environment/
Redford, K. H., Adams, W., & Mace, G. M. (2013). Synthetic biology and conservation of nature: Wicked problems and wicked solutions. PLoS Biology, 11(4), 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001530
Redford, K. H., & Sanjayan, M. A. (2003). Retiring cassandra. Conservation Biology, 17(6), 1473–1474.
Robert, A., Thévenin, C., Princé, K., Sarrazin, F., & Clavel, J. (2017). De-extinction and evolution. Functional Ecology, 31(5), 1021–1031. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.12723
Rolston, H. (1979). Can and ought we to follow nature? Environmental Ethics, 1(1), 7–30.
Rolston, H. (1985). Duties to endangered species. Bioscience, 35(11), 718–726.
Ryder, O. A., McLaren, A., Brenner, S., Zhang, Y.-P., & Benirschke, K. (2000). DNA banks for endangered animal species. Science, 288(5464), 275–277. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.288.5464.275
Sandler, R. (2013). The ethics of reviving long extinct species. Conservation Biology, 28(2), 354–360.
Sandler, R. (2017). De-extinction: Costs, benefits and ethics. Nature Ecology & Evolution, 1, 105.
Scientific American Editors. (2013, May 14). Why efforts to bring extinct species back from the dead miss the point. Scientific American. Retrieved from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-efforts-bring-extinct-species-back-from-dead-miss-point/
Seddon, P. J. (2017). The ecology of de-extinction. Functional Ecology, 31(5), 992–995. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.12856
Seddon, P. J., Moehrenschlager, A., & Ewen, J. (2014). Reintroducing resurrected species: Selecting deextinction candidates. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 29(3), 140–147. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2014.01.007
Sheehan, M. (2009). Making sense of the immorality of unnaturalness. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 18(2), 177–188. https://doi.org/10.1017/S096318010909029X
Sherkow, J. S., & Greely, H. T. (2013). What if extinction is not forever? Science, 340(6128), 32–33. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1236965
Simberloff, D. (2014). The “balance of nature”—Evolution of a panchreston. PLoS Biology, 12(10), 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001963
Snyder, N. F. R., Derrickson, S. R., Beissinger, S. R., Wiley, J. W., Smith, T. B., Toone, W. D., & Miller, B. (1996). Limitations of captive breeding in endangered species recovery. Conservation Biology, 10(2), 338–348. https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1523-1739.1996.10020338.x
Steeves, T. E., Johnson, J. A., & Hale, M. L. (2017). Maximising evolutionary potential in functional proxies for extinct species: A conservation genetic perspective on de-extinction. Functional Ecology, 31(5), 1032–1040. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.12843
Swart, S. (2015). Zombie zoology: History and reanimating extinct animals. In S. Nance (ed.), The historical animal (pp. 54–72). Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt1j2n79q.7
Takala, T. (2004). The (im)morality of (un)naturalness. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 13(1), 15–19. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0963180104131046
Turner, D. D. (2017). Biases in the selection of candidate species for de-extinction. Ethics, Policy & Environment, 20(1), 21–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2017.1291835
Van Den Belt, H. (2009). Playing God in Frankenstein’s footsteps: Synthetic biology and the meaning of life. NanoEthics, 3. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11569-009-0079-6
Waldron, A., Mooers, A. O., Miller, D. C., Nibbelink, N., Redding, D., Kuhn, T. S., … Gittleman, J. L. (2013). Targeting global conservation funding to limit immediate biodiversity declines. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 110(29), 12144–12148. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1221370110
Welchman, J. (2017). How much is that mammoth in the window? Ethics, Policy & Environment, 20(1), 41–43. https://doi.org/10.1080/21550085.2017.1299674
Whittle, P. M., Stewart, E. J., & Fisher, D. (2015). Re-creation tourism: De-extinction and its implications for nature-based recreation. Current Issues in Tourism, 18(10), 908–912. https://doi.org/10.1080/13683500.2015.1031727
Wu, J., & Loucks, O. L. (1995). From balance of nature to hierarchical patch dynamics: A paradigm shift in ecology. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 70(4), 439–466. https://doi.org/10.1086/419172
Zorich, Z. (2010). Should we clone Neanderthals? The scientific, legal, and ethical obstacles. Archaeology, 63.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Campbell, D.I., Whittle, P.M. (2017). Ethical Arguments For and Against De-extinction. In: Resurrecting Extinct Species. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69578-5_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69578-5_4
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-69577-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-69578-5
eBook Packages: Religion and PhilosophyPhilosophy and Religion (R0)