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Comment by _Algernon_ | Hacker News Reader

Seems sadistic to bring back a species to a world in which it can't survive in the wild. It's existence will be nothing more than a plaything for humans to look and gawk at.

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How is creating Dodo birds and putting them in a zoo inherently different than having other animals in a zoo?

Having regular animals in zoos is also controversial.

The question is different when it can be summed up as "to be or not to be", but I think it's still an ethical bag of hurts.

Good question! I think it is related to knowing that zoo animals have wild counterparts and the ones in zoos are just (unlucky) specimens to be gawked at. You convince yourself this somehow helps the conservation of the wild ones through education etc. That's different from unextincting a species but there's no place for them anywhere in the wild world.

It's not. Zoos are depressing as hell.

Actually, bringing back extinct or near-extinct animals has a lot of side benefits to ecosystems as a whole - just look at the successes of wolf reintroduction programs. Wolves keep reindeer and similar animals in check, which is beneficial for plant life and subsequently species that depend on greenery [1].

But for that, you need quality breeding stock in zoos in the first place.

[1] https://defenders.org/blog/2020/03/we-were-wrong-about-wolve...

I find it noble. It would only be sadistic if we bring them back just to see dodo meat farms in a couple of decades.

Are they tasty?

Apparently, based on contemporary accounts, opinion was varied, but they were meaty and easy to catch. A bit of selective breeding would probably make them ideal poultry farm animals.

It died due to invasive animals brought by humans

That changes nothing about my statement

If we can recreate the bird, we can recreate the environment for the bird too.

We have barely been able to do that for animals which are still living, but lost their natural environment. Assuming we can recreate a maintain an accurate environment to ensure the bird’s long term success is way, way too optimistic.

They have an active mammal extermination programme in NZ trying to deal with the threat to the native birds.

https://www.doc.govt.nz/news/media-releases/2016/predator-fr...

The time-honored solution for this is to exterminate invasive species on a small nearby island, and make that a reserve. New Zealand has employed extensively with quite a bit of success, and there are numerous small, uninhabited islands in Mauritius that seem like plausible options.

We can, but that assumes continued political will to do so. That's something we're definitely not good at.

I'm sorry. I took your statement as "if the bird couldn't survive on its own..."

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