Pursuing de-extinction will limit the time and resources that we could be spending on protecting current endangered species. As conservationists it would be our responsibility to handle the consequences of the released de-extinct species being integrated into the biosystems under conservation protection. The preservation of wildlife itself is composed primarily of non-profit organizations, meaning that the majority of funding comes from private donors who choose to donate to the cause. We must use these funds resourcefully to gain the best possible results for the ecosystems at stake since we are relying upon the non-hunting profit. If the wildlife conservation world already receives little financial backing, so does it truly make sense to divert the majority of necessary funding towards resurrecting species that have already past their time? De-extinction is extremely resource-intensive as it would require the use of technologies that have only recently been introduced and developed, not to mention additional conservation funds to monitor released species as well as protect their native environments. Managing healthy populations and rebuilding damaged ecosystems all require heavy funding. Pappas explains that “in almost every case, reviving an extinct species and asking the government to pay to conserve it would require deprioritizing a greater number of still-living species, the researchers found. The money used to conserve all five New South Wales species, for example, could go to keep 42 not-yet-extinct species from vanishing.” Each day that we don’t protect a current species, hundreds will go extinct each year. Spending millions to bring back one species will not compensate for the thousands lost to humanity. Conservation itself receives little funding, so we will be forced then to make a decision: do we focus all our efforts on bringing back that have disappeared? Given limited conservation dollars, bringing back one lost species would essentially cost the extinction of more alive endangered species. “For example, if New Zealand resurrected 11 of its extinct species, the government would have to sacrifice the conservation of 33 living species to pay to keep the revived species alive” (Pappas, 2017). If it is our responsibility to atone for causing hundreds of species to go extinct, is it then right to neglect the still-alive animals headed toward extinction if not supported by humans?
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