The finality of a biological extinction is the urging motivating factor of conservation biology. It was believed that once a species has gone extinct, that species would be gone forever. The only efforts conservation biologist could have done to preserve species diversity was to protect, conserve, and restore. Conservation biologist could protect the species and their habit from direct harm, conserve the species directly used by humans by making sure we do not use the species overly excessive, and lastly would restores the species’ habitats to functional, safe conditions. The advancements in synthetic biology and biotechnology has lead to the possibility of resurrecting species. De-extinction is the process of recreating an extinct species or specific characteristics of that extinct species. This process relies on genetic intervention and reproductive technologies such as cloning and back breeding (Kaebnick et al.). There are several de-extinction projects already underway by leading scientist in this emerging field, including Stewart Brand, George Church, Stanley A. Temple, Joel Greenberg and Ben Novak. TThe science world has a moral obligation to reverse some of the damage humans have caused to biodiversity by resurrecting passenger pigeons since these birds are one of the most well known victims of human activities.
The Passenger pigeon was given this name because it was a bird of passage. It’s latin name is Ectopistes Migratorius translated to Wandering Migrant (Owens). The passenger pigeon populated the skies of the United States and Canada, traveling in large, desene flocks called colonies. This nomadic bird traveled in order to support two different activities, they needed to find roosting sites and places to nest (Fuller). Roosting sites are where birds could take shelter overnight, depending on the amount of food available to feed the flock. Nesting is when birds would choose a location that can support a longer stay than roosting sites would. When these birds would nest, they would build nests to raise their young.
Boris Worm, a professor of marine biology, contends that the extinction of the abundant species of passenger pigeons were due to two things: direct hunting and habitat loss by humans cutting down all the trees (From Billions to None: The Passenger Pigeon's Flight to Extinction). Worm warns that the same thing is threatening marine life. Worm describes the new massive top predator of these animals are humans that are driving all species toward extinction. At the time when Europeans arrived in North America, Passenger Pigeons were thought to make up 25– 40 percent of the bird population in the eastern United States” (Shapiro, 32). Within a couple of decades, this species became extinct in 1914. Overexploitation is one possible reason why the Passenger Pigeons became extinct. Passenger Pigeons were an undeniably easy and abundant food resource. Fuller states that the lifestyle of Passenger Pigeons left them completely defenseless since the species traveled in vast colonies (72). These birds traveled in flocks so wide and long that they blotted out the sun, Shapiro describes a 1866 report of a “single flock of of more than 3.5 billion passenger pigeons flying across the Ohio skies” (32). These dense flocks attracted shooters and netters, it was unnecessary to aim, shooters would simply take point and could slaughter masses. The species’ habit of traveling in large colonies made it easy for humans to profit off of this easy food source. “During the 1871 nesting in Wisconsin 100 to 200 barrels were sent daily, 300 pigeons in a barrel for 40 days (From Billions to None: The Passenger Pigeon's Flight to Extinction).” Fuller claims that the behavior of traveling in large colonies left this species vulnerable to humans, the film From Billions to None supports Fuller’s claim by providing that netters in Wisconsin nesting slaughter over 2 million birds in a single period of 40 days. The passenger pigeon population could not sustain this human onslaught frequently. Since humans targeted these birds when they were nesting, such as in the Wisconsin nesting example, the species were not provided the opportunity to raise their young so the future generations of birds ceased before they could even procreate.
The passenger pigeon species were vital in the eastern North American forest ecosystems. These forest rely on disturbance as a factor in regregating forest cycles (revive & restore). Ben Novak is the lead scientist in the Revive and Restore’s The Great Passenger Pigeon Comeback project. In his article, Novak proposes that the passenger pigeon were the “ecosystem engineers of eastern North American forests, being the major disturbance generators, shaping the composition, biodiversity, and bioabundance of forest habitats” (37). The behavior characteristics of nomadic traveling in large, dense flocks allowed these birds to be a constant source of forest disturbance (Novak). The species’ ecological niche was beneficial to the continuation of the eastern North America forest regeneration cycle. The forests that experiences frequent disturbances was found, by Novak, to support a greater diversity of species shortly after the disturbance during the early succession cycle. Flocks of passenger pigeons imitated a canopy disturbance. Once the cycle returned to a open canopy, sunlight would stimulate the colonization of grasses, flowers, and shrubs (revive & restore). Old trees would regenerate and new trees would germinate. Wildfires were a positive source of forest disturbance and the primary factor shaping the forest prior to European settlement (Novak). However now with the suppression of these fires the forest ecosystem can not continue its nature regeneration cycle. Scientists leading the revive and restore projects hypothesize that by restoring the abundant flocks of passenger pigeons into the eastern United States forest region, they can restore the consistent disturbance that simulated the regregating forest cycles “making forests more productive and diverse” (revive & restore). This is would support one of the two reasons Kasperbauer proposes in support of the de-extinction movement. One reason is the potential of the ecosystem roles the species may positively contribute to (Kasperbauer). Novak’s theory that this species of bird were ecosystem engineers could once again fulfil the function of causing needed forest disturbances, would be a potential role in the forest ecosystem Kasperbauer states that is needed in order to consider reviving an extinct species in the present day.
The first de-extinction in history is of the extinct Pyrenean ibex, also known as a Burcado, by team of Spanish and French scientists in 2009 (Shapiro). The last living Burcado was a female named Cecilia living in the Ordesa National Park. The technology used to clone this animal needed living cells which prompted scientists in April 1999 to retrieve a small tissue sample from Cecilia’s ear (Temple). The DNA from the ear tissue was then used to create Burcado embryos, in total 208 embryos were implanted into the hybrid surrogate mother – a domestic goat and a different species of ibex (Shappario). Only one of the 208 embryos survived to be born. This life was short lived because the baby Burcado had a malformed lung and died ten minutes later from suffocation (Temple). The Bucardo de-extinction project is one of the more promising projects because it involves using frozen material that was collected prior to the extinction. Other de-extinction projects like the Passenger Pigeon, needs well preserved material.