Rohwer & Marris claim that “many conservation biologists” believe that there is a prima facie duty to preserve the genetic integrity of species. (A prima facie duty is a necessary pro tanto moral reason.) They describe three possible arguments for that belief and reject them all. They conclude that the biologists they cite are mistaken, and that there is no such duty: duties to preserve genetic integrity are merely instrumental: we ought act to preserve genetic integrity only because doing so (...) is required by some other duty, such as the duty to preserve taxonomic biodiversity, or the duty to preserve the reproductive fitness of existing species. In permitting for instance the introgression of cattle genes into the genome of Bison bison we therefore do not necessarily fail in any respect ethically. I criticize the paper on three fronts. (shrink)

Two females, Nadine and Fatu, are the sole surviving Northern White Rhinos (NWR). The subspecies is functionally extinct. Hope for NWR now lies in emerging reproductive and genetic technologies, which could potentially produce NWR from induced pluripotent stem cells. What is the rationale for this project? This question raises almost every philosophical issue facing conservation science today. I argue that NWR recovery is hard to justify via many traditional paths (e.g., historical fidelity, ecosystem health, biodiversity), but if we shift focus (...) to white rhinos in general or even mammals then clear benefits emerge. (shrink)

The Svalbard Global Seed Vault provides a backup of seed collections from genebanks around the world. It’s unique character has made it iconic in the public imagination as a ‘Noah’s Ark’ for crop plants. Its remote location and strict controls on access have, however, also lent it an air of mystery, swirling with conspiracy theories. In this paper, I first clarify the aims of the Vault, the history of its development and the policies and practices of its current operation. Given (...) concerns around its potential links to the biotechnology industry, I go on to ask whether GM crops are currently stored in the Vault. Presenting several reasons for why GM crops are formally excluded, while indicating the potential for both change and unintentional contamination, I am compelled to question whether GM crops should be excluded. Answering this requires an interrogation of their potential conservation value as modern contributors to crop biodiversity. In exploring this issue, I suggest that there has been surprisingly little discussion of the moral status and conservation value of bio-technological crop plants and indeed, of how we care for all the techno-lifeforms we are currently engaged in co-creating. I suggest that these are becoming important issues as biotechnological techniques and applications begin to rapidly evolve and diversify. Emphasizing the scope for a refreshed interdisciplinary research agenda exploring the interface between biotechnology and biodiversity conservation, I conclude the article by proposing new concepts of synbiodiversity and symbiodiversity to encourage further debate. (shrink)

This paper presents a new model for how to jointly analyze the ethical and evidentiary dimensions of environmental science cases, with an eye toward making science more participatory and publically...

Rohwer and Marris (2015) question the existence of a prima facie duty to preserve genetic integrity leaving open the question of what we should preserve. Many of the arguments used to justify their position could set the platform to defend a duty to preserve the diversity of both wild and domesticated species. In times where agricultural land covers a third of world’s land area and major efforts are undertaken to green urban areas a defense of biodiversity could benefit hugely by (...) intelligently incorporating human-induced diversification. It still remains critical to assess in how far new introductions compensate for losses and here the insights of those defending genetic integrity are an important tool. By acknowledging the added value of human-induced biodiversity we could slow down massive extinction of domesticated and semi-wild varieties by giving these a greater space in human-made environments. (shrink)

1. In this paper I will explore the moral permissibility of a possible genetic intervention to save the ʻōhiʻa lehua tree from fungal pathogens from two different metaphysical perspectives: western...

Yasha Rohwer and Emma Marris argue there is no prima facie duty to preserve genetic integrity; they contend, rather, that preserving the integrity of specific genomes is only a mean...

In this essay, I call into question Yasha Rohwer and Emma Marris’s attack on what they see as a dominant view in conservation biology: namely, that there is a prima facie moral duty to preserve gen...