Should We Change Species to Save Them? - New Yorker
Assisted evolution - is it the next big, irreversible hiccup for Australian wildlife?
We’re always on the lookout for news that relates to previous episodes of our podcast, or just makes our jaws hit the ground. This New Yorker article By Emily Anthes reminded Matt of our interview with Elizabeth Kolbert, as it presents a fascinating cases of human ingenuity that has the potential to go horribly wrong.
In Elizabeth Kolbert’s book Under a White Sky, she considers the potential for serious repercussions where ingenuity can spiral out of control, causing unforeseen problems that have no easy solutions. In the interview, we also discussed her 2014 book, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, in which she chronicled previous mass extinction events, and compares them to the accelerated, widespread extinctions during our present time. We discussed how technological advances could play a part in ‘saving our planet’ and whether they should or not. Listen to the episode here.
According to the Australian Institute of Marine Science, 'assisted evolution' (AE) refers to a range of approaches that involve active intervention to accelerate the rate of naturally occurring evolutionary processes. These approaches aim to enhance certain attributes such as temperature tolerance, growth or reproduction. They are using it to enhance the resilience of corals to predicted future ocean scenarios of elevated temperature and acidification on the Great Barrier Reef.
Anthony Waddle, who is a conservation biologist at Macquarie University in Sydney and is quoted in the article, said, “It is an audacious concept, one that challenges a fundamental conservation impulse to preserve wild creatures as they are. But in this human-dominated age — in which Australia is simply at the leading edge of a global biodiversity crisis — the traditional conservation playbook may no longer be enough, some scientists said.”
How far is too far when we are trying to protect species from extinction? Is this another morality debate similar to bringing back extinct species, where millions if not billions of dollars are poured into (potentially unsuccessful at best and catastrophic at worst) research that could be being spent on finding alternative solutions to biodiversity loss?
Having lived in Australia and seeing the devastation caused by cane toads which were once thought to have been a ‘good idea’, I'm definitely extremely concerned that releasing genetically modified wildlife could be the next big ireversible hiccup - Hannah