By: Jefferson Weaver
I admit it, I loved the movie Jurassic Park. Not just because of the acting, the dinosaurs, or the concept, but because of a line spoken in deep sarcasm by Jeff Goldblum: “What could possibly go wrong?”
What with another JP movie coming out, the media has been covering the whole cloning controversy a little more lately. Speaking as a reporter, I think it’s mainly so we can see if spellcheck can read words like “archaeopteryx”, but that’s neither here nor there.
One of the articles I read with some interest discussed how some biologists are trying to clone a wooly mammoth, amongst other extinct animals. All I could do is wonder how people who apparently are so smart could be so stupid.
Ethical considerations of cloning aside – I mean, really, we can all name ten people we wouldn’t want to see re-created for every one we might – I just don’t see a whole lot of good that could come from such tinkering.
God made everything that lives on the earth — including the animals. In Genesis 1:24, the Bible says, “God said, ‘Let the land produce living creatures according to their kinds: livestock, creatures that move along the ground, and wild animals….’ A little while later, God created man, and said that he would “rule” over the animals. We’re instructed, in a half-dozen verses, to be stewards of all God’s critters.
As humans have changed the world, so some species have died out. It’s part of a natural process that occurs without the aid of humans, but we tend to accelerate it sometimes. There are success stories of environmental responsibility, but sometimes, species are going to die out. It’s part of the way things were designed, whether we like it or not.
And sometimes, humans get a little big for their britches, and decide that we’re smarter than God and nature. Hence, the plan to clone wooly mammoths.
The whole concept apparently stems from concerns that elephants are dying out, and that by combining elephants and mammoths, the curved-tusk critter of the caveman days can be resurrected, and live in colder climates where it won’t be messed with. The fact that my lovely friend Salome de Villieres and her husband, along with other professional hunters, have likely done more for preserving elephants never occurs to folks whose idea of natural light is sunlight filtered through a UV screen on a window.
Giving people jobs, supporting habitat preservation, and fighting poachers—all using money raised through once-in-a-lifetime hunts for non-endangered species –consistently does more for wildlife conservation than any number of privileged bunny huggers protesting in the streets of a nasty old city.
Yet humans are humans, and proud creatures. Ergo, the scientists have decided they can save elephants by creating mammoths. Never mind their failure with cloning an ibex (it survived seven minutes) or other critters. I admire their tenacity, if not their common sense.
Amongst the critters being considered for cloning, on paper anyway, are a six-foot fowl called the “Terror Bird.” It reportedly ate anything it could kill, up to and including horses and Dial or Dire wolves, another species that died out, due to competition with other wild canids. Artists and archaeologists have decided Terror Birds looked something like enormous chickens with attitudes.
There’s even speculation the Terror Birds would have been a competitor to the saber-toothed cat (which is another species being mulled for resurrection).
Am I the only one who sees problems with this? Chickens can be mean enough as it is. Imagine one that wants to eat you.
On the other end of the avian scale, there’s a move afoot that apparently has gained some steam to bring back the passenger pigeon. How they would prevent passenger pigeons from interbreeding with other pigeons, I don’t know, considering that even professional pigeon breeders have problems keeping bloodlines pure with the pigeons we do have.
Then there’s the archaic whale that may have been Jonah’s “great fish”. It could bite 20-foot sharks in half, which would be pretty good for the endangered whales of the world, but would be kind of tough on the allegedly dwindling shark population.
All I can figure is these scientists must not have been loved by their mommas. Or maybe they were allergic to dogs.
I hunt, trap and spend a lot of time in the woods. I also care deeply about conservation, including non-game species. I’ve given money to responsible groups trying to help protect endangered species (as opposed to the ones who feed the lawyers trying to prevent all hunting).
I’m just not a fan of creating even more problems in a laboratory than we have in the woods and fields in the first case.
Consider, if you will, the coyote. Our coyotes came here from two sources: a natural migration following the rebirth of deer herds, and from coyotes who escaped fox pens. My fellow trappers in the Midwest consider a 30-pound song-dog to be a big critter. Campfire stories aside, 50-pound yotes ain’t uncommon in North Carolina.
Why the difference? Well, our over-protected Eastern deer herd required a larger predator. Some of our coyotes are descended from yotes who went to Canada during the Dust Bowl, and made friends with brush wolves. Throw in a stray dog or two as well, since even the best families have children who bring shame on the family name. The progeny then continued following the growing deer herds, and eventually ended up giving us great big coyotes to take out the preponderance of little tiny deer created by over-protection and the societal stigma against shooting does. The coyote adapted, in part because man made a habitat good for deer, overprotected the species, and then brought in a species to replace those man exterminated a century or more ago.
Every single one of those problems were created by man’s mismanagement. So we have to adapt, as the animals did, in order to better maintain our role as stewards.
Now imagine, if you will, what might happen if the dreams of the filtered-air breathers actually came true.
Like many of you, I often carry a round or two of buckshot in a pocket when I go bird hunting. Had we even a few “Terror Birds” running loose, I think sales of No. 7 ½ field loads would drop precipitously.
I have had more than a few close encounters with aggressive coyotes, but there is archaeological evidence of Dire wolves, like their modern, but smaller cousins in the Russian subcontinent, hunting humans, even when easier prey species are available. A pack or two of Dires wandering around would make folks quit worrying about losing their cats and small dogs, and start wondering which relative they could spare.
Never mind the “Summer of Jaws” in 1975, when people were even scared to swim in freshwater lakes. Think about the impact that re-creating the leviathan would have on beach tourism.
The average healthy elephant consumes 250 pounds of forage a day. It’s logical to assume a wooly mammoth, which was larger, would eat more. At least the folks protesting the pipelines across Canada would have something else to complain about, since the elk and caribou really would be starving to death.
At least it would provide the saber-tooth cats, dire wolves and Terror Birds something to snack on, so I could focus on stalking a mammoth. Now if I could only find a dog that would point Terror Birds, and figure out the right size trap for those big cats and wolves.
After all—what could possibly go wrong?
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