![]() “Nomadic birds like passenger pigeons are really more dependent on the structure of the habitat, not the exact climate of where they’re going,” says Ben Novak, an evolutionary biologist who heads an effort to resurrect the Passenger Pigeon with the group Revive & Restore. The paper also does not take into account essential information such as forest cover, species composition, or how plants and animals interact. ![]() The analysis, however, has many uncertainties, including which environmental variables most mattered for each bird in the past and how the climate and environment will change in the future. As a result, native species in the new range could find themselves in direct competition with revived ones. They found that, even after removing land humans had developed, the models predicted a significant future shift in habitat availability, with increases outside of the areas where those birds once lived. Using those parameters, the researchers calculated how much total suitable space existed for each species in the years 1900, 2000, and 2100. Historic records told them where each species lived in the past, and they looked up land cover and climate, including average temperature and precipitation, for those locations. To probe the revived birds’ potential fates, Peers and his colleagues built computer models of suitable habitat. “The biggest take-home message is that recreating the historic distribution of the species would not be possible,” says lead author Michael Peers, now a doctoral candidate at the University of Alberta. ![]() The findings, reported in Biological Conservation, surprised them: By 2100, the three birds, if reintroduced, might have an even larger distribution outside their historic range than within it. Researchers at Trent University in Ontario recently did that, examining the potential habitat for three extinct bird species-the Carolina Parakeet, Ivory-billed Woodpecker, and Passenger Pigeon. While such questions have generated much discussion, few if any studies have tried to empirically evaluate them. ![]() “If you bring back one species that causes the demise of another, you get a zero sum or even negative sum game.” “Species can either fail to thrive or thrive too well, or in a way that humans don’t like,” says George Church, a geneticist at Harvard University. Or conversely, those species might divide and conquer, outcompeting today’s animals for food or space. Historic ranges might be too highly altered to support resurrected species, for example. As such, researchers are well aware that the reintroduction of Dodos, Tasmanian tigers, or other creatures might not go exactly as planned. “The only thing we’re interested in is conservation benefit, which we’ve defined in terms of restoring some missing ecological function,” says Philip Seddon, a zoologist at the University of Otago in New Zealand who is involved with drafting de-extinction guidelines for the International Union for Conservation of Nature.Įnvironments aren't static, however, and our understanding of nature is imperfect. ![]() While resurrected individuals would not be exact genetic replicas of their ancestors, scientists believe that they can create very close proxies-so close that the animals would fill a niche left vacant by the species’ disappearance. The emerging field of de-extinction seeks to revive lost species using advances in synthetic biology, including cloning. Now, some researchers are betting that, in certain cases, extinction might be able to be undone. Extinction is deeper than death-it’s an irreversible biological loss that extends well beyond individuals.Īt least, that’s what we’ve always understood it to be. ![]()
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