A Mammoth Mistake….

There’s an article on the CBC site today about scientists in Russia and South Korea who are going ahead with an attempt to clone a wooly Mammoth.

The comments section is full of people on both sides of the fence, some who think it’s a ‘cool’ idea, and some who have reservations, some of the Biblical variety..

There is, possibly, a good argument to be made for the cloning of certain species that Man  hunted to extinction in the recent past, such as the dodo or moa, but a mammoth? Does no one think

beyond the “Would be so cool!” stage?

Where would this animal, should they succeed, live? In a cage? Or let’s say (wildly surmising) that they decide to release it into the wild…what wild? The melting Arctic? Or, possibly, the Prairies, where it could compete for the tiny amount of sustenance that the few buffalo/bison that are left can eat? These are huge animals, how do they keep control of them once they are loose, shoot them (the N. American answer to everything, like errant bears, cougar, etc?)

It is mind-numbing how shortsighted people who view this as a positive seem to be..why not solve the eco-crisis for remaining species who are being pushed to the brink of extinction by the

degradation of their own habitat? It’s not about bringing back a mammoth..it’s about creating decent living conditions for the animals we have left…but of course, it was inevitable that some idiot would

decide that he could make some easy money by this PT Barnum stunt..guess we should be grateful that it wasn’t a T-Rex, or some other cuddly raptor that someone decided to resurrect…yet.

Michael Crichton must be slowly rotating in his grave….