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That's a good question.
It seems like an obvious fix, doesn't it? Right now, many
people are worried about all kinds of animals going extinct:
the blue whale, the tiger, the Great White Shark – sadly,
the list goes on and on. Why not just take some of their DNA
and clone them?
Well, one problem
is that we're not very good at cloning just yet. We are only
just beginning to understand the science of cloning, and that
leaves us with many possibilities of accidents happening.
For example, we could find that many of our clones wind up
sickly or weak, and that raises animal welfare concerns: how
would a bunch of sick clones survive if we released them into
the wild?
This also applies
to the idea of cloning animals long since extinct (in order
to bring them back into the world). Where would we clone these
animals? Clones still need a mother (a pregnant animal to
allow development to occur)…where do we find her? And even
then, even we were successful in cloning a bunch of, say,
woolly mammoths, where would they live? Their habitat is no
longer accustomed to them, and in some cases, the habitat
is as extinct as the animal itself.
No, the best way
to protect and conserve species is to protect the habitat.
Endangered species are a sign that their habitat isn't working
and that our planet is in trouble. And on a somewhat gloomy
note, if you consider the constant damage you humans are doing
to your own habitat, you might have to put yourselves
on the old endangered species list one day…
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Glossary
term:
July 2007
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