So I recently learned that, in the Cayman Islands, where they drove green sea turtles to near(?) extinction, they have had a successful re-introduction program. What’s interesting is that they collect, incubate, and hatch the eggs in a hatchery, and raise the turtles until they’re a year or two old, and then release them. By then, they’re too Big for the land predators, and 100% of the turtles make it to the ocean. They’ve brought the population back to tens of thousands.
At some point, I guess they’ll consider the population stable and end the program, and let nature go back to what it was doing with the predators and all, but for now it’s nice to know that these turtles, at least, don’t have to face that sort of predation. It’s the least we could do, as a species.
We’re also re-introducing mostly-Aurochs (re-bred, not genetically identical to the originals), and we’ll probably see thylacines brought back from extinction.
I don’t know if anyone is working on Dodos, or whether there’s even enough genetic material to work with, but that’s one I’d personally really love to see brought back.
So I recently learned that, in the Cayman Islands, where they drove green sea turtles to near(?) extinction, they have had a successful re-introduction program. What’s interesting is that they collect, incubate, and hatch the eggs in a hatchery, and raise the turtles until they’re a year or two old, and then release them. By then, they’re too Big for the land predators, and 100% of the turtles make it to the ocean. They’ve brought the population back to tens of thousands.
At some point, I guess they’ll consider the population stable and end the program, and let nature go back to what it was doing with the predators and all, but for now it’s nice to know that these turtles, at least, don’t have to face that sort of predation. It’s the least we could do, as a species.
We’re also re-introducing mostly-Aurochs (re-bred, not genetically identical to the originals), and we’ll probably see thylacines brought back from extinction.
I don’t know if anyone is working on Dodos, or whether there’s even enough genetic material to work with, but that’s one I’d personally really love to see brought back.
Mammoth 🦣 hybrids are going to be fucking cool.
Mammoths, too! Hopefully we can get fully sequenced genomes on those.
I haven’t heard of any concrete efforts to re-introduced mammoths, though - is someone working on that?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revival_of_the_woolly_mammoth
Cool.