The Frozen Ark

In 30 years 1,100 different species of animals and 1,800 varieties of birds are expected to disapear. Within those numbers, 1 quarter of all mammals!

Linda Hurst's article, "The Frozen Ark- Toward Jurassic Park" made this all very clear.
What caught my attention about this article, other than its catchy title, is what scientists are doing to decrease this problem. The genetic footprints of the endangered and most threatened species are gathered and preserved. It's like a modern day Noah's ark. Collect, preserve, and in a worst case scenario ..clone!

Cloning has been given a lot of negative attention throughout the years. Here is yet another positive aspect of the procedure.

There are arguments against this DNA preservation. One problem is calling the Frozen Ark a "Doomsday Vault". It is true that instead of acting now to save the endangered, enforcing more laws in the world to protect the animals, the scientists are focused on "collecting" these tissue samples. However, that is ignorant to say because there are organizations such as the WWF, or peta that have animal issues as their number one priority. Another downer on the project is that it requires a lot of work; it's labour intense- a lot of digging, travelling, microscoping, research (that sounds great to me, actually :P).

Scientists have already started a parallel project, known as the international seed bank which is housed in the Norwegian Artic. This bank contains millions of seeds from every variety of food on earth (just in case we need to learn to grow food "from scratch"). The Frozen Ark is similar, in that small tissue samples, eggs, sperm, and embryos of animals are frozen and preserved in liquid nitrogen (which can be later used in artificial reproduction). This process is already in the works with the panda population in China... and (this is exciting!) genetic material has been extracted from the tasmanian tiger! -once the largest marsupial that went extinct in the 1900's. Scientist's extracted the DNA from a 100 year old tiger which was preserved in alcohol in the Melbourne museum. When they injected the DNA into a mouse embryo.. it was alivee! Striking!

Hopefully in 30 years, that prediction of losing the specified number of species will hold untrue. But just incase, it is interesting to hear that actions such as this are in the works now :) Save planet earth!!