Resurrection of several extinct species, the increasingly accelerated loss of wild rhinoceroses and a disastrous financial response to unburnable carbon are just some future global conservation issues flagged up in this year’s Horizon Scan, recently published in Trends in Ecology and Evolution.
Professor William Sutherland and Dr Mark Spalding are among the 18 scientists who took part in this year’s Horizon Scan, seeking to identify potential future conservation issues in order to reduce the “probability of sudden confrontation with major social or environmental changes”.
One such plausible issue is the resurrection or re-construction of extinct species, such as the woolly mammoth, passenger pigeon or the thylacine (a carnivorous marsupial). However, though there may be many benefits to the restoration of these animals, such a high-profile project could lead to attention and resources being diverted from attempts to thwart current threats to non-extinct species’ survival.
Professor Sutherland said ‘There has been discussion of this idea for some time but it is now looking more practical and the idea is being taken seriously. A key issues is whether this is really a conservation priority’.
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Image: Thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger
Credit: E.J. Keller Baker
Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge
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Scientists highlight conservation issues
24 December 2013
Scientists from across the world have “scanned the horizon” in order to identify potentially significant medium and long-term threats to conservation efforts.