What is de-extinction? Is it a good idea?

Throughout history, there have been a lot of cases when our ancestors killed a lot of species of animals and made them all extinct without knowing it. Modern people have come up with a couple of ways on how to make these extinct animals come back to life, or close enough to what they looked like in the past. This process is called “de-extinction”. Even though there are reasons why it would bring benefits to society, a number of people have rejected the idea of extinct animals coming alive again. However, I disagree with these people. I believe that de-extinction is a good idea because we can fix our ancestor’s mistakes and we can improve ecosystem health.

Firstly, I think that de-extinction is a good idea because we can fix our ancestor’s mistakes. A long time ago when our ancestors were living, they had no clue whether one animal was in danger of getting extinct or not. So they only had two choices: starve to death, or just randomly eat anything they could find. Of course, starving wasn’t a good choice for our ancestors, so they hunted many animals before they starved. This meant that many species died out, which wasn’t a positive. However, de-extinction can solve this problem, and make a simple resolution to this. Even though it might not be the exact same animal from the past, a somewhat similar animal can be reborn. For example, if an extinct mammoth had been frozen in ice for several thousand years, the mammoth would be dead, but all of his fur and bones would still be there. This would mean that scientists and archeologists today can get the fur and extract the DNA so that they could try and make a new mammoth. Using a similar process, we can bring many other animals back to life and can fix our ancestors’ mistakes from the past.

Secondly, I believe that de-extinction is a good idea because we can improve the ecosystem's health. Animals can help the environment a lot in good ways, and the extinction of a particular keystone species can therefore be devastating. For example, in the tundra, which is the grasslands in Russia and Canada, the ecosystem is degrading and struggling due to a lack of large mammals grazing This is extremely bad for the ecosystem because if a lot of the plants die, the CO2 that is currently stored in the tundra will go into the atmosphere and make climate change even worse. However, instead of just moping around about the loss of grazing mammals, if we can restore and preserve the tundra like it used to be, it will be able to store a lot of CO2 which will lessen climate change. Therefore, if we could bring back the mammoths, wooly rhinos, giant sloths and other extinct animals, we can save the ecosystem’s health and contribute to the fight against climate change.

In spite of these reasons, some people think we should not pursue de-extinction. One common claim is that if there are some parts missing from the animal's genes and we fill those gaps with similar genes from a modern species, it won’t be the same animal from the past. However, these animals will definitely have most of their features similar, so it wouldn’t really matter, especially when we are thinking about restoring lost ecosystems.

In conclusion, I believe that de-extinction is worth developing because it can bring benefits to society and improve the health of various ecosystems. Due to these reasons, I believe the de-extinction is a good idea and I really think that it should happen one day.