In Ronald Sandler’s “The Ethics of Reviving Long Extinct Species” the question of the moral permissibility of bringing back extinct species is addressed. Sandler explores the reasons in favour of their revival first; justice, the establishment of lost value, creative value, and serving as a conservational last resort. Sandler also engages with arguments against revival, these being the unnaturalness of it, animal welfare concerns, ecological and health concerns and the issue of hubris. Sandler takes a mostly anthropocentric approach in grappling with the issues.
Sandler provides very salient points in favour of reviving long extinct species but ultimately concludes that there are more pressing issues to be prioritized such as “efforts to conserve existing species and that the ecological, animal welfare, conservation, legal, and health concerns”. I completely agree with this position based on concern for existing animals and the extinct species.
The argument is pretty straight forward for why existing species should be prioritized but I’ll still briefly address them. Firstly there is an ongoing threat to animals in existence that doesn’t exist for already extinct species. Animals that are alive today have to compete to survive whereas there is no danger presented to already extinct animals (it’s not like you can go double extinct). One could argue that the longer a species goes without existence the less prepared to deal with existence they will be when they return. This opposition holds some merit but realistically, barring catastrophic disaster, there is no way that the environment will change enough for a species to be completely unable to adapt to their environment, especially with the aid of scientists. Additionally, there is an important distinction made by Sandler to centre the discussion around long-extinct species. Specifying that the species have been extinct for a long time already suggests that whatever concerns might arise from the resurfacing of the species are not of significant concern. For these reasons, this argument doesn’t sway my perspective.
On the other hand, in the case of the extinct species, we might assume that to not exist is bad. However, I would argue that this is not the case. To adopt an epicurean view; existence is the absence of pain which is good and an absence of pleasure which is neither nor bad. This suggests that not existing is, at very least, a neutral endeavour. There are numerous ways to object to this position of course and in this application, the most salient would be that individuals are missing out when they do not exist, therefore not existing is bad on the deprivation account. While there is merit to this perspective from our perspective as existing but if one was to not exist, there would be nobody to be deprived of experiences.
At the centre of my perspective is still agreement. Just as Sandler outlines in their paper, there is nothing wrong with reviving long-extinct species. However, we should focus on species that are currently in existence and how we can protect them, the ecosystems and the health of the planet. Once we have dealt with those concerns, the question of bringing back extinct species can be re-examined.
– Luke
Work Cited:
Sandler, R. (2014), The Ethics of Reviving Long Extinct Species. Conservation Biology, 28: 354-360. https://doi-org.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/10.1111/cobi.12198