Resurrect mammoths to stop Arctic emissions?

[Still Waters]

If you managed to time travel back to Ice-Age Europe, you might be forgiven for thinking you had instead crash landed in some desolate part of the African savannah. But the chilly temperatures and the presence of six-ton shaggy beasts with extremely long tusks would confirm you really were in the Pleistocene epoch, otherwise known as the Ice Age.

Unfortunately, both mammoth and most of the mammoth steppe ecosystem today have long but disappeared. But a group of geneticists from Harvard are hoping to change this by cloning living elephant cells that contain a small component of synthesised mammoth DNA. They claim that reintroducing such mammoth-like creatures to Arctic tundra environments could help stop the release of greenhouse gases from the ground and reduce future emissions as temperatures rise due to climate change.

https://theconversation.com/could-resurrecting-mammoths-help-stop-arctic-emissions-95956

[acute]

Repopulating the Arctic sounds like a mammoth task.

[DebDandelion]

1 hour ago, acute said:

Repopulating the Arctic sounds like a mammoth task.

One like is not enough. Well said...well said

[DebDandelion]

1 hour ago, Still Waters said:

If you managed to time travel back to Ice-Age Europe, you might be forgiven for thinking you had instead crash landed in some desolate part of the African savannah. But the chilly temperatures and the presence of six-ton shaggy beasts with extremely long tusks would confirm you really were in the Pleistocene epoch, otherwise known as the Ice Age.

Unfortunately, both mammoth and most of the mammoth steppe ecosystem today have long but disappeared. But a group of geneticists from Harvard are hoping to change this by cloning living elephant cells that contain a small component of synthesised mammoth DNA. They claim that reintroducing such mammoth-like creatures to Arctic tundra environments could help stop the release of greenhouse gases from the ground and reduce future emissions as temperatures rise due to climate change.

https://theconversation.com/could-resurrecting-mammoths-help-stop-arctic-emissions-95956

Interesting theory

[spud the mackem]

Well the planets Methane Gas will certainly increase

[Doug1029]

Even if a mammoth can be successfully cloned, there are other unknowns.  Like:  will mammoths actually be able to survive on a shrub tundra long enough to convert it?  Might modern soils contain pathogens that would wipe out a newly-introduced herd?  One idea concerning mammoth extinction is that they were the victims of diseases carried by men and/or dogs, that our activities contaminated the tundra.

I wish them success, but they are still a very long way from being able to do it.

Doug