If we humans were somehow able to bring bacj extinct animal species with some editing done so they would better survive our modern earth would you join the efforts to protect these animals to survivable numbers and do on?
Honestly my short answer is, no I wouldn't. This is, however, one of those "I already have a rant locked and loaded" questions for me, so here's my longer answer...
De-extinction is an extremely complicated subject, but my personal opinion is that in the vast majority of cases de-extinction would more often than not be extremely ecologically irresponsible, especially since the species that would receive the most funding would mostly be charismatic megafauna that have been extinct long enough for earth's ecosystems to have moved on without them.
Let's take woolly mammoths as a case study, since they're the Big Topic that de-extinction tends to revolve around. Even in the best case scenario the woolly mammoths that could exist in real life would be genetically modified Asian elephants, not true mammoths.
But, let's say in this hypothetical we can bring back a true, 100% genetically accurate mammoth. The amount of time and work and money that it would take to bring back a sufficiently large population to actually begin breeding and become self-sufficient would be absolutely staggering. Moderns elephants have a very slow gestation period and birthrate, and if mammoths were anything similar then breeding a viable population would take multiple decades at the least, and more likely over a century.
But let's say they do breed, we get a viable population, and we introduce them to the Siberian tundra. There are three options of what could happen next:
The environment has changed too much since mammoths were last here and our new mammoth population cannot get the resources they need. In trying to feed themselves adequately, they cause serious destruction to an environment that cannot support them, before dying out and going extinct again. An insane amount of money and time has now been spent on a failed experiment that caused more harm than it solved.
The mammoths are able to survive in the changed environment, they establish a successful breeding population, and we start to reap the potential benefits of their reintroduction. The researchers in favour of mammoth de-extinction claim that they would promote the return of the old Siberian wilderness and help combat climate change by encouraging the growth of grasses. There really is absolutely no way of testing these benefits and they are currently purely hypothetical.
A new population of mammoths now also means resources have to be invested in protecting them from threats such as poaching. They would also be just as at risk from climate change as any other species in that region, since mammoth-driven enironment regrowth would never be enough to adequately offset the rate of global warming on its own.
The mammoths are too well suited to their environment and become invasive, feral species that cause massive ecological damage, driving other native species to extinction and potentially wreaking havoc on human settlements too. We now have a pest species on our hands that is bigger than any that humanity has ever had to deal with. The mammoths would have to be eradicated, which would cost an untold extra amount of money and may not ever be truly successful.
In my opinion, the potential risks involved even in scenario B, a successful introduction of mammoths into Siberia, are far too great to ever be worth the amount of resources that would have to be invested to achieve it, and the two other options are completely disastrous. While the specific risks and benefits involved would be different for every species this could be applied to, the basic principle of "disaster on either side of a very narrow margin for success" remains the same.
I guess for me, what it comes down to is the fact that these species are gone, but there are many, many other animals at risk of going the same way that we can still do something about, right here and right now. Why sink an uncountable number of resources into de-extinction efforts that most likely will fail, when instead those resources could be used to actually preserve the species we have left.
Our hypothetical scenario is basically a pipe dream at this point, but conservation efforts for living species can and do work absolute wonders. The numbers of bluefin tuna in southern oceans are in an unprecedented rise at the moment thanks to conservation efforts, and have already overtaken the population goals set for 2030. And that's just one example of the tangible effects that conservation biology is having for real living species.
Compared to that, de-extinction is extremely high-risk, mostly very low-reward, currently untested, and extremely resource-intensive. Honestly I feel like the main motivator behind the whole concept, beyond any ecological benefit, is a feeling of guilt around the extinction of species, especially those that died at the hands of humans.
And yes, extinction is an absolute tragedy, and my heart absolutely aches for the species that we've lost. But I don't think undoing our mistakes through de-extinction is the right way to utilise that guilt. Instead, we need to be focussed on protecting the world, ecosystems, and species that we have now.
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