NOTE- Final essays due in DROP FOLDER @ 3:00 on Friday.
Are we with within nature, or is it in our hands? Most of our opening Venn diagrams placed man within nature, but many conversations since have questioned that assumption. While climate change dwarfs these examples in importance, these two strangely opposing stories reveal specific ways we are taking remarkable control by using science and DNA to recreate the extinct wooly mammoth. This sounds like sci-fi, but there's real money and science behind it, not that I believe it will or should happen. Ironically and simultaneously we are using bad science and DNA to delist, or to stop protecting wolves in the lower 48 states. Of course wolves haven't lived in most of the this area for years. As you may know, wolf hunting has actually resumed in Minnesota and Wisconsin this year. Some would view this as a success story, a species learning how to survive in modified habitat and coming back from the brink of extinction. This article points out that another way of seeing this decision is a narrower definition of habitat than some see as the purpose of the Endangered Species Act. What both articles also reveal, is that the definition of a 'species' has gotten more instead of less complicated with DNA analysis.
Are we with within nature, or is it in our hands? Most of our opening Venn diagrams placed man within nature, but many conversations since have questioned that assumption. While climate change dwarfs these examples in importance, these two strangely opposing stories reveal specific ways we are taking remarkable control by using science and DNA to recreate the extinct wooly mammoth. This sounds like sci-fi, but there's real money and science behind it, not that I believe it will or should happen. Ironically and simultaneously we are using bad science and DNA to delist, or to stop protecting wolves in the lower 48 states. Of course wolves haven't lived in most of the this area for years. As you may know, wolf hunting has actually resumed in Minnesota and Wisconsin this year. Some would view this as a success story, a species learning how to survive in modified habitat and coming back from the brink of extinction. This article points out that another way of seeing this decision is a narrower definition of habitat than some see as the purpose of the Endangered Species Act. What both articles also reveal, is that the definition of a 'species' has gotten more instead of less complicated with DNA analysis.
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