I’ve seen a lot of attention lately to restoration of extinct species. It strikes me as a band-aid, not a solution.
Here’s the core of the system:
Critters don’t go extinct for lack of human intervention. They go extinct because the balance of birth and death rates is unfavorable, so that population declines, and (stochastically) winks out.
That happens naturally of course, but anthropogenic extinctions are happening much faster than usual. The drivers (red) are direct harvest and loss of the resource base on which species rely. The resource base is largely habitat, but also other species and ecosystem services that are themselves harvested, poisoned by pollutants, etc.
Reintroducing lost species may be helpful in itself (who wouldn’t want to see millions of passenger pigeons?), but unless the basic drivers of overharvest and resource loss are addressed, species are reintroduced into an environment in which the net gain of births and deaths favors re-extinction. What’s the point of that?
If the drivers of extinction – ultimately population and capital growth plus bad management – were under control, we wouldn’t need much restoration. If they’re out of control, genetic restoration seems likely to be overwhelmed, or perhaps even to contribute to problems through parachuting cats side effects.
This is not where I’d be looking for leverage.
