Bringing back extinct dodo birds is an ethical minefield
It’s no secret that human activities have put many inhabitants of this planet at risk. Species extinction is happening dramatically faster than in the last ten million years. An estimated one quarter of all species on earth are threatened with extinction, many within decades.
What can scientists possibly do to stop this trend? For some, the answer is de-extinct.
Colossal, a biotechnology company that made headlines for its plan to “eradicate” the woolly mammoth, is now attempting to “bring back” the famous dead dodo bird. The company says its goal is to create a population of undead dodos to introduce to the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, where the burly, flightless creatures lived before humans wiped them out in the late 16th century.
As environmental humanists, we examine the morality of various conservation efforts and are interested in how extinction might change the way people think about their responsibility to nature. One of us, Ben, is a professor of environmental ethics who explores the ethics of extinction in his 2018 book, The Fall of the Wild. The other, Risa, is a graduate student researching how extinction might change public perceptions of extinction, particularly its emotional impact.
What De-Extinction is and isn’t
De-Extinction isn’t exactly what it sounds like. Rather than “bringing back” lost species, it’s more of a process of creating their high-tech doppelgangers.
Scientists would edit the genomes of the dodo’s closest living relative — the Nicobar pigeon, which contains the pigeon’s entire DNA set — adding some of the key dodo genes, derived from conserved dodo remains. Then they could put that genome in an egg cell and have that egg grow into an organism that should look like a dodo.
But this organism would not be genetically identical to the dodo. Nor would it have any other dodos to teach it to act like a dodo and, well, actually be a dodo.
Colossal has not yet successfully created extinct creatures. Neither do other scientists, unless you count the team that cloned the Pyrenean ibex in 2003 — but that clone died within minutes. And yet Colossal seems confident, hoping to extinct Tasmanian tigers by 2025 and woolly mammoths by 2027. They’re certainly amassing a fortune for doing this: Since its inception in 2021, Colossal has raised over $225 million through tech investors, Paris Hilton, and even a CIA-backed venture capital firm.
Possibilities or pitfalls?
Proponents have argued that extinction will eventually help restore ecosystems. “Bringing back” passenger pigeons, for example, could help restore forests in the Northeastern United States, while woolly mammoth proxies could help restore the Siberian steppe and keep the permafrost frozen. Some extinction advocates have also positioned their projects as potential long-term solutions to combating mass biodiversity loss in general.
But many ecologists and ethicists have highlighted the uncertainty surrounding the introduction of these novel creatures into the wild. Even if the extinct dodos behaved more or less like their extinct counterparts, it’s hard to know how a habitat that hasn’t seen any dodo-like birds for 350 years will be affected by this new species. Opponents have rallied even harder against claims that extinctions could be a widespread solution, pointing out that returning one species at a time would not be enough to stem Earth’s losses.
Other issues include deciding where all these extinct creatures would live, as well as animal welfare concerns: for potential surrogate animals that would be impregnated, and the extinct creatures themselves, which never asked to be “brought back.”
More than science
To us, one of the more interesting questions about extinction has to do with how it is changing the way people think about extinction.
Some extinction advocates have argued that extinction could create a more hopeful story about human ability to combat the mass extinction. Many others also share the desire for more inspiring conservation stories. Some conservationists and psychologists have argued that environmentalists need more positivity to get people excited about environmental issues.
However, others say that annihilation is not hopeful but misleading. Many fear that extinctions will actually make people less inclined to care about ongoing extinctions. After all, why should we care about preventing extinctions when we can, after all, reverse them?
It’s hard to rally the troops with a message of unrelenting guilt and despair. But reckoning with these difficult emotions can be useful for reflecting on humanity’s responsibilities — especially considering that annihilation is our fault in the first place, and since annihilation doesn’t actually “revive” anything.
In fact, some scholars argue that humans really need to learn to mourn extinct species. Grief, they say, is a transformational process that helps people see the value of what has been lost and appreciate what is left. Grief will never be enough without action. But we believe that learning how to grieve together can be a more responsible and honest way to deal with extinctions than pretending it can easily be reversed.
So what motivates better to protect the environment: positive or negative stories? There are still no sure-fire answers, and testing their impact on today’s audiences is an important part of Risa’s research. Maybe it can help environmentalists in general tell more motivating stories – but it will take time to get there.
In the meantime, we propose that scientists and extinction advocates call extinction for what it really is: not the resurrection of extinct species, but the creation of their replacements.
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