Attitudes towards using biotechnology as a tool for species restoration

Ongoing biological research will, in all likelihood, soon make it possible to breed individuals from endangered, and even extinct, species and eventually re-introduce them in their former habitats.

Methods currently being explored range from cloning and in vitro fertilisation (for species where well-preserved cell samples exist) to more or less complicated genetic modifications of extant relatives of extinct species.This will make it possible to restore species that have played important roles in their respective ecosystems.

At the same time, there is a risk that using genetic technologies and other biotecknic tools may undermine public support for conservation; partly because the technologies used may be preceived as artificial and this may also affect how the restored ecosystems are perceived, and partly because an exaggerated belief in the possibility of technical fixes may undermine support for protecting other endangered species.

We will use choice experiments to examine attitudes to the use of biotechnology in restoration of endangered and extinct species, how these attitudes are affected by how artificial the methods used are perceived as, and how information about the possibility of using biotechnology in future affects the views on currently endangered species.

We will also examine how these attitudes are affected by views on nature protection and technology in general.