Reintroduction and De-extinction

Abstract

We are entering an age in which species extinction may be reversible. De-extinction, as it has been labeled, can apply to any species for which DNA can be recovered, from woolly mammoths of the Pleistocene to thylacines and passenger pigeons from the twentieth century. These developments, which were showcased in March 2013 at a daylong conference called TEDxDeExtinction, held in Washington, DC, (http:// tedxdeextinction.org), are exciting to some scientists and terrifying to others. If we are to embark on this de-extinction journey, an act some might label playing God, we need to establish the rules of the game. I want to suggest that the well-established standards for species reintroduction projects provide a solid foundation on which de-extinction can be built. Critics of de-extinction in the popular science media have quickly pointed out drawbacks. From an ethical perspective, they have pointed to potential violations of animal welfare standards, the potential drain on resources that could be used in the conservation of still-existing species, and the implication that species destruction might be seen as permissible if it is reversible. The ecological objections have included the lack of ecosystems in which the re-created creatures could live, the potential invasiveness of the species in the ecosystem, and the potential for new disease vectors. Exploration of de-extinction’s ethical dilemmas will require serious scientific and public debate, including a significant contribution from humanities researchers, including philosophers and historians, who have the appropriate theoretical background for conceptualizing what is at stake. I will not tackle those ethical issues here. The solution to the ecological dilemmas, however, may already be at hand through the application of reintroduction standards. Reintroduction as a guide Reintroduction, the release of a species into an area in which it had been indigenous but has since become extinct, is a long-standing practice. The earliest use of the word reintroduction in a conservation context is in an article from 1832 about the return of capercaillie (or capercailzie) to Scotland (Wilson 1832). The western capercaillie was hunted out in Scotland in the late eighteenth century, and Wilson reported on the first attempt to bring the birds back to Scotland using specimens from Sweden. From these humble beginnings, an entire science of reintroduction has been built up, particularly over the last 30 years. Reintroduction science has a strong institutional basis in the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and in its Species Survival Commission reintroduction specialist group, founded in 1988. The IUCN developed guidelines for reintroduction (IUCN 1998), which are currently under revision (Dalrymple and Moehrenschlager 2013). The guidelines suggest background studies to allow identification of the species’ habitat requirements, identification of lessons learned from prior reintroduction projects of similar species, evaluation of potential sites within the former range of the species, selection of appropriately diverse genetic stock, and an assessment of the socioeconomic context of the project. Armstrong and Seddon (2008) extended the guidelines, proposing key questions at the population, metapopulation, and ecosystem levels that should be addressed