Bio-Interventions: Cloning Endangered Species as Wildlife Conservation

Abstract

This chapter analyses the debate about reproductive cloning of endangered species. Humans first domesticated chickens, cattle and sheep in order to produce reliable food sources. Efforts to improve livestock led to the science of animal husbandry and eventually to the large-scale factory farms characteristic of modern societies. The technologies that enable reproductive cloning of endangered species have their roots in the imperative to improve the productivity of farm animals, making their use for environmental reasons controversial within the broad field of conservation. Allies in the war against extinction often find themselves at odds over whether or not cloning should be incorporated into the conservation genetics tool-box. Opponents raise concerns both about the diversion of scarce resources from habitat preservation and the vexed question of which species should be chosen as candidates for such high-tech interventions. Advocates counter that any tool that can stave off the rapid disappearance of genetic diversity is essential to consider and ethically justified. In order to address these arguments, this chapter begins with an historical account of the simultaneous emergence of the animal welfare movement and modern biotechnology in the late 19th century. It then turns to a discussion of mid-20th century advances in biotechnology, particularly with respect to cloned and transgenic animals. The chapter concludes by analyzing advances in endangered species cloning since the birth in 2001 of Noah, a baby gaur and the first endangered species to be cloned via somatic-cell nuclear transfer. The conclusion of the chapter focuses on the social and ethical implications of preservation in a petri dish.

The central task of science is to arrive, stage by stage, at a clearer comprehension of nature, but this does not at all mean, as it is sometimes claimed to mean, a search for mastery over nature.

—Lewis Thomas (1983)