The Guardian tackles the ethics of rewilding

The Guardian posted an interesting article yesterday from Tori Herridge: Mammoths are a huge part of my life. But cloning them is wrong.

I’ll concede that a mammoth is not a plant, but part of what I found interesting is that Herridge points out that mammoths didn’t exist in isolation. She tackles the idea that mammoths could somehow be part of a plan to restore the arctic steppes, but she makes an important point:

There’s a reason the terms “de-extinction” and “rewilding” are so powerful and that’s because they imply a return to a time, a state of grace, a place that was somehow unspoiled. Cloning a mammoth offers us the hope of undoing the excesses of humanity, bringing back the creatures whose extinction we helped bring about.

I think the idea of turning back the clock, to a time when things are better, is a powerful image. However it isn’t practical. Herridge points out that the mammoth was part of a wider ecosystem of arctic steppe, and it’s not certain that the plants will naturally appear if you dump a load of mammoths in Siberia.

It’s not even purely about the plants. Looking this up I saw there was a lot about remediation in the Root Biology special issue of Annals of Botany (now free access). In particular, Interactions between exotic invasive plants and soil microbes in the rhizosphere suggest that ‘everything is not everywhere’ say Rout and Callaway. They’re talking about microbes in the context of invasive species, but I wonder what ten thousand years of change has done to the soil of the arctic.

We don’t have the plants, we may not have the right soils. We are going through a big extinction event. I’d love to see a mammoth, but sadly when you look at the social problems a mammoth would have, as well as the many conservation efforts competing for limited funding, I think Tori Herridge is right, and that she does a good job of explaining all the problems.