Is Cloning the Ultimate Solution?

Common sense seems to dictate that an animal species that is extinct, will stay extinct. Recently, scientists have discovered that with DNA there is a way to bring an extinct animal species back to life. When it comes to the discussion of cloning or bringing back a species, most people would consider that it is not an option. Whereas scientists feel it is not just a dream, but that soon they will be on the right path to improving the environment. I have always believed that with the right technology, cloning could eventually help the environment that surrounds us. Climate change is one problem with the environment, global warming is the main issue. Because of global warming, Arctic permafrost can melt too quickly. If the Arctic permafrost melts too quickly, there will be a release of greenhouse gases, causing havoc on life on Earth (Andersen 2). Cloning could be the ultimate solution for this problem. 

Pleistocene Park is a nature reserve in Siberia that is open for fifty miles. The reserve is a grassland that contains bison, musk oxen, and wild horses. In the future, scientists hope to bring woolly mammoths to the reserve. Woolly mammoths would be brought back to improve the current climate change. Nikita Zimov is a scientist that wants to restore the Beringia and he intends to do so with grasslands. His plans include spreading the park across Arctic Siberia and into North America, which would help to slow down the thawing of the Arctic permafrost. According to Andersen if the Arctic permafrost were to warm too quickly then, “it would release some of the world’s most dangerous climate-change accelerants into the atmosphere” this would bring catastrophe on all forms of life (Andersen 2). Woolly mammoths would help the process of spreading grasslands by knocking down trees to create more grasslands. According to Andersen, “A version of this behavior is on display today in South Africa’s Kruger National Park…As the population has recovered, the park’s woodlands have thinned, just as they did, millions of years ago, when elephants helped engineer the African savannas that made humans into humans” (Andersen 15). Meaning that knocking down trees to create more grasslands would assist in engineering the Beringia and the current problems with climate change. Although woolly mammoths could be a solution for the thawing of the Arctic permafrost, cloning has not yet been perfected. Cloning has many reasons as to why it has not been perfected yet. The DNA that is used to clone animals already existing is perfectly intact, but with the DNA from a woolly mammoth, the nucleus is not always found or perfectly intact. Without the nucleus of a cell, a woolly mammoth’s DNA cannot be perfectly replicated. This could be solved with current cells that are similar to a woolly mammoth’s cells, which belongs to the elephant family. An additional problem with cloning, is getting the genetics to be just right, although woolly mammoths are closely related to the elephant family, some traits are not the same, but the gene editing part is the easiest of them all according to George Church: “Assembling the edited cells into an embryo that survives to term is the real challenge” (Anderson 6). When cloning a woolly mammoth is the gestation period would take up to two years. Elephants go through a twenty-two month gestation period, which is the longest of all mammals. Cloning has been attempted on mice, but the cloned mice have yet to survive the gestation period: “…scientists are getting closer with mice, whose embryos have stayed healthy in vitro for almost half of their 20-day gestation period” (Andersen 6). Although cloning a woolly mammoth would be a long process, this could save the current climate change. 

In conclusion, climate change is going to affect the earth, cloning could help stall this process. Therefore, cloning would be the ultimate solution for expanding Pleistocene Park and assisting the environment in the future. 

Works Cited 

Anderson, Ross. “Pleistocene Park.” The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2018, Sam Kean, Houghton Mifflin 2018, 1-22.