I'm 100% on board with concerted efforts to reintroduce species that already exist into habitats that they once roamed. That's a relatively low effort/high reward conservation project.
I'm unconvinced that the value we expect to gain from resurrecting an extinct species is worth the overhead of doing so, compared to using those same resources to keep the species that we haven't yet killed off alive and help them thrive.
There needs to be a term for the cognitive fallacy that, just because two endeavors are conceptually adjacent in your mind, that puts them in competition for resources in any real way.
That isn't how it works. Conserving megafauna and de-extincting the mammoth aren't competing with each other except in the very general sense that both are in competition with every other endeavour which is not explicitly engaged in profit seeking.
But if you were to say "I'm unconvinced the value we expect to gain from preserving old computers in working condition is worth it, relative to efforts to reduce child mortality in West Africa" it would obviously be a weak argument which few would entertain. But the situation is much more like that than you make it look here.
In concrete terms, woolly mammoths don't seem likely to starve endangered Siberian animals, and if they turned out to be an ecological problem (for example, they might eat important plants to an excessive degree) they would be fairly easy to capture, move and confine.
In abstract terms, there is only a small difference of degree between capturing, reproducing and dispersing rare animals to increase a small population (for example, small raptors in cities as a defense against obnoxious birds); reestablishing a recently extinct population with imports from a place where an animal isn't extinct yet (for example wolves and bears in various places in central Europe); reestablishing a less recently extinct population with artificial marvels of genetic engineering (mammoths, aurochs); introducing completely foreign animals (for example rabbits in Australia, a major bad idea from a conservation point of view); introducing artificial animals that never had a population anywhere (hopefully all fiction, but for example photosynthesis would be impactful).
> There needs to be a term for the cognitive fallacy that, just because two endeavors are conceptually adjacent in your mind, that puts them in competition for resources in any real way.
Perhaps: "The more roads you build, the fewer sidewalks"? On second thought, perhaps not, since they are a little too closely related.
Sure. But I'm pretty sure we're not done driving species to extinction. The benefits of bringing back the quagga may not outweigh the immediate costs, but developing the ability to revive extinct species in general very well might.
But the wolves released weren't the same as the ones that once roamed. The Canadian wolves were chosen because they were from a healthy population that lived in similar habitat and preyed on similar species, not because they were just dropping in the same subspecies.
The two types of projects don't compete for the same pool of money. There's some overlap, but there's some funding that goes to specific goals on their merits, and then there's some funding that could be pulled in if the project captures someone's interest (including public). As for buying human time, happily that often comes with a big discount for work on cool stuff (a fact routinely abused by businesses in some sectors, such as game development or entertainment in general).
There's also an extra discount for trustworthiness - it's much harder to fake results when the evaluation criteria include whether or not it's the cool stuff that was promised.
Finite time and money doesn't mean there is competition in real practice. If you think canceling one automatically means more support for another, you have a broken model of reality.
If I save $5 on beer, that doesn't mean the nature conservancy budget gets more funding. It will almost assuredly stay in my bank account or get spent on chips.
> If you think canceling one automatically means more support for another
I don’t, neither do I think competition means a close system. But it’s definitely a system where parties influence each others.
Your beer does not share any goal with mammoth, but other environmental projects does. Let’s say you want to invest 5€ to fight climate change. During your search of projets to support, you might encounter the cool-mammoth one. Now there’s competition for those 5€.
That is a hypothetical concern, not a statement about reality. It is easy to construct "just so" stories for anything, but that doesn't mean they are true or meaningful.
I dont want to sound harsh but I see this type of thought quite often. I think it is a major irrational distortion to conflate possibility and theory for reality.
It is unclear if money targeted for environmental work has ever gone to mammoths, or ever will. Why should the mere possibility dictate anything or drive any action?
Im saying "just so" stories should not be a valid basis for concern.
Branding isn't evidence that proposals are in competition for funding opposed to additive.
The only evidence is your "just so" story, and even that doesn't mean it is meaningful.
It strikes me similar to a runaway precautionary principle or concern trolling. It doesnt matter if you can imagine a scenario where something bad happens. What really matters is if that bad scenario actually happens, and how often.
I'm unconvinced that the value we expect to gain from resurrecting an extinct species is worth the overhead of doing so, compared to using those same resources to keep the species that we haven't yet killed off alive and help them thrive.