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NORTH WIND PICTURE ARCHIVES/VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS - A woodcut from the 1870s shows passenger pigeons being shot in Louisiana. |
Can man really play god? Can we make right what went wrong? What about less desirable species, like insects or poisonous snakes? Even dinosaurs?
These are good questions.
I have long been fascinated by the plight of the passenger pigeon. Descriptions of the flocks numbering billions of individual birds and darkening the skies overhead are but memories as the last passenger pigeon died in 1914. And now, scientists believe that they can make right what man destroyed.
Should they?
Is it right to recreate extinct species and place them again on the planet which has changed since they departed? It is a question of Jurassic Park implications. What if their reintroduction becomes a significant problem? What if they must be returned to extinction to for financial or other reasons?
It is an issue that deserves a lot of thought before investing the millions of dollars to revive a species--even though I would love to see passenger pigeons darken the skies once again or maybe e ben see a woolly mammoth in a zoo somewhere. .
-- Bob Doan, Elkridge, MD
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