Cross-posted from Legal Planet.
The Washington Post reported this week that scientists think they can resurrect the Pinta Island subspecies of Galapagos tortoise whose last remaining member, “Lonesome George," died this summer. Scientists at Ecuador’s Galapagos National Park say they have found enough Pinta Island genetic material in tortoise on another nearby island that an intensive breeding program over 100 to 150 years could regenerate the pure Pinta Island subspecies.
It’s all very cool and sci-fi to think we might be able to regenerate extinct species (does anyone besides me remember Jurassic Park?). But from a policy perspective, the question is not can we do it, but should we? It’s the kind of question we’ll have to face more and more, with climate change radically changing the world’s habitats. What exactly do we want to conserve, and what level of resources are we willing to put into conservation or into conserving one entity possibly at the expense of others further down the list?
We can’t answer that question without thinking a lot harder about why we think conservation is desirable. Are we trying to save “nature” in some sense, and if so is a deliberately human-bred species natural in the sense that matters or not? Or in a slightly different context, should we be moving pikas or other species from areas that are or soon will be no longer suitable habitat to areas outside their historic range that might become suitable?
I don’t pretend to have the answers to those questions. In fact, I don’t think any one person should be expected to answer them, or should suppose that they alone have the definitive answer. As Alejandro Camacho, Jason McLachlan, Ben Minteer and I wrote a couple of years ago, we need a multidisciplinary national or global conversation on conservation goals. Whether Lonesome George should be given virtual children is as good a place to start that conversation as any.
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Holly Doremus | November 29, 2012
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. The Washington Post reported this week that scientists think they can resurrect the Pinta Island subspecies of Galapagos tortoise whose last remaining member, “Lonesome George,” died this summer. Scientists at Ecuador’s Galapagos National Park say they have found enough Pinta Island genetic material in tortoise on another nearby island that an […]
Rena Steinzor | November 28, 2012
For a potentially earth-shattering move against one of the most notorious corporate environmental scofflaws in history, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) sure hid its light under a bushel this morning. The agency’s scant three-paragraph press release announced simply: “BP Temporarily Suspended from New Contracts with the Federal Government,” adding that “EPA is taking this action […]
| November 28, 2012
Action on climate change should be one of the first things President Obama takes on in his second term. There are countless steps the President might take, but perhaps one of the easiest things for him to do on that front is to instruct the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to release eight Department […]
Ben Somberg | November 26, 2012
CPR Member Scholar Noah Sachs published an op-ed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch this morning critiquing the Independent Agency Regulatory Analysis Act. That bill would allow the White House to review rules proposed by independent federal agencies. Writes Sachs: Imagine if important government agencies, purposely designed by Congress to be insulated from political pressure, suddenly had […]
Thomas McGarity | November 21, 2012
One of the crowning legislative achievements of the Obama Administration’s first term was the enactment of the Food Safety Modernization Act. Like any safety statute, however, the new law will have no practical bite until the implementing rules are issued. In this case, that’s until the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) promulgates regulations fleshing out […]
Holly Doremus | November 20, 2012
Cross-posted from Legal Planet. As already noted by Rick and Megan, last week BP pleaded guilty to 14 criminal counts arising from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon blowout in the Gulf of Mexico. Megan provided a good basic overview of the terms of the agreement. Here is the plea agreement itself. The amount of money BP has […]
Robert Adler | November 16, 2012
For those who have not been following the news lately, a recent article reported the following: A large tropical storm attributed to “unseasonable rainfall” slammed into the coast and moved inland, leaving many dead or missing, tens of thousands of residents evacuated or homeless, and government disaster response agencies struggling to provide food, shelter, and […]
Rena Steinzor | November 15, 2012
This post is based on an article I wrote with Anne Havemann entitled “Too Big to Obey: Why BP Should Be Debarred,” published in the William & Mary Environmental Law & Policy Review. Attorney General Eric Holder and his lead prosecutor, Lanny Breuer, are deservedly running a victory lap in the immediate aftermath of their […]
Matt Shudtz | November 15, 2012
In January, USDA issued a proposed rule that would allow poultry slaughter facilities to increase the speed of their slaughter and evisceration lines as part of an effort to “modernize” the slaughtering process. Today, I attended a meeting of the National Advisory Committee on Occupational Safety and Health (NACOSH) and asked for the committee’s help […]