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Novak is among a small group of "de-extinction" engineers, a relatively fringe group of scientists that hope to use genetic engineering to protect or revive iconic animal species ravaged by human activity.
To some, de-extinction is an ecological-sized guilt trip, a species-wide Pet Cemetery horror story ripe for disaster. Yes, biodiversity is important; but who is to say that an extinct species can adapt and survive in an ecological system that's moved on since its passing? Or perhaps more importantly, what if newly-revived animals—a true "invasive species" for Earth—cause more damage than good to our fragile ecosystem?
"Why go through the trouble" is something his team gets asked, said Novak. For passenger pigeons, the answer is simple: recently, almost a
millennium[century] after their man-driven extinction, we finally understand the critical role they played in shaping the eastern North American ecosphere.
The passenger pigeon isn't extinct -- it's merely resting.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MrGuy on Wednesday October 24 2018, @04:57PM (4 children)
This is...dumb. Or, at least, it's dumb in this context of the passenger pigeon.
Invasive species are species that originated foreign to an ecosystem that are introduced into it, upsetting the "natural" balance of that ecosystem. Whether that's a good or bad thing, or just evolution in action, and whether it's ethical for people to choose WHICH invasive species should or shouldn't be there, is something that reasonable people debate. [fivethirtyeight.com]
But the passenger pigeon is indigenous to the area it's being proposed to be reintroduced into. And the amount of time that has passed since the extinction of the passenger pigeon is trivial in evolutionary terms. This is not introducing an invasive species. This is species reintroduction, which is something that humans do all the time with species that had in the past lost part of their native habitat (usually do to human intervention) but are not completely extinct. The only operative difference between this and (say) the reintroduction of the Grey Wolf to Yellowstone is that (unlike the grey wolf) the passenger pigeon went extinct in the meantime, so there's an extra (and extremely challenging) step to having animals to actually reintroduce. [wikipedia.org]
Now, if you want to talk about introducing superintelligent dinosaurs to modern America, [drmcninja.com] or reintroduce wooly mammoths in the Arctic, or sabertooth tigers, then, yeah - they're so removed from the modern ecosystem that they're effectively foreign species to every modern ecosystem. But scaremongering about that doesn't seem like a reasonable reason to oppose this move.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 24 2018, @09:15PM
Thousands ain't much different than hundreds on evolutionary scales. The ecosystems have already adapted, even if the genes might not have sorted the whole thing out yet.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday October 24 2018, @10:28PM (2 children)
It is quite probable that is no longer the case. When an extinction of a species on a scale of what happened to the passenger pigeon occurs a lot more than just the pigeons go with them, from microorganisms in the forest soil to top of the food chain predators. Plus the mainstay of the ecosystem that supported them no longer exists in the same scale, there were huge unbroken beech forests that were the primary food source for the pigeons which are gone now. It would be an interesting experiment, but there would be the risk of causing increased pressure on remaining populations of songbirds, which are struggling enough as it is.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday October 25 2018, @02:21PM (1 child)
So what top of the food chain predator went extinct because the passenger pigeons went away? It wasn't humans.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Joe Desertrat on Friday October 26 2018, @08:49AM
Not necessarily extinct (although I am sure there were some), but certainly raptors, small mammals. reptiles and amphibians, insectivores and others all depended on the ecosystem engineered by the pigeons. Dispersal of seeds, the guano deposited and direct predation and scavenging all changed enormously in a short period of time.