Extinction Is (Still) Forever (Probably)

At the top of the box office this week is Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, the fifth installment in the series (sort of) based on Michael Crichton's novel Jurassic Park.  When the book was written in the 1990s, it was hard to believe that sort of technology might be available to us one day.  Right now, it's still a little hard to believe.  But many people are starting to believe it, and that's what worries me.

Periodically, an article will come out claiming that we are on the verge of bringing back from extinction one creature or another.  In most cases that I've read, the species in question has been a mammal that has been driven to extinction by humans in relatively recent years; the quagga and the thylacine (Tasmanian tiger) are perennial candidates, though longer-gone species, such as woolly mammoths are sometimes mentioned.

There are plenty of reasons to be dubious about such a procedure.  Do we have room and resources for these other species?  What is the cost of replicating these animals, and what could it be mean in terms of resources not spent on still living species?  Can we be sure that we're recreating them correctly, behaviorally and physically?

There's a more important concern in my mind.  If we have the ability to clone extinct species (or if we at least convince ourselves that we can), then why worry if an endangered species goes extinct?  We can just bring it back later, right? 

I've been thinking about this a lot lately in light of the recent controversy surrounding the red wolf.  The species is on the verge of losing its last legal protection in the wild.  The species may very well go extinct in the wild for a second time.  I would hate for us to be dismissive of the very real possibility that we could loose this species.  For the time being, we need to act like extinction is still forever.  As of now, it still is.

American red wolf expert: "I cannot let this species go extinct under my watch"