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Should we build a nature reserve on Mars?


Still Waters

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There are 8 billion of us now. The UN says when the population peaks around the year 2100, there'll be 11 billion human souls. Our population growth is colliding with the natural world on a greater scale than ever, and we're losing between 200 and 2,000 species each year, according to the World Wildlife Federation.

An Engineer from the UK says that one way to mitigate the damage from the clash between humanity and nature is to create more habitat. We could do that by building Terran ecosystem preserves on Mars.

Paul L. Smith is a Civil Engineer in the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Bristol, UK. In an article in the International Journal of Astrobiology, he explains how we could build a nature preserve on Mars that would act as an extraterrestrial nature reserve (ETNR.) The ETNR would act as both a "psychological refuge and botanical garden," according to Smith.

https://phys.org/news/2022-12-nature-reserve-mars.html

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/international-journal-of-astrobiology/article/extraterrestrial-nature-reserves-etnrs/

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How many wild animals does he think will still survive by the time we get Mars terraformed?

Edited by Desertrat56
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I propose that we send two antelopes and two zebra's to Mars.

 

Ten years later we can send two lions and two hyena's to predate on them. And two vultures. B)

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Build a new and modern Noah's Ark. Stuff a couple of all animals from Earth (which we still haven't exterminated) on it, and send it to Mars to wait for the first human colonizers.

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2 minutes ago, jethrofloyd said:

Build a new and modern Noah's Ark. Stuff a couple of all animals from Earth (which we still haven't exterminated) on it, and send it to Mars to wait for the first human colonizers.

It would have to be genetic material, not the actual animals since we won't be there in a viable way for a few decades.

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Might as well ask if we should build a spa on Uranus.

43 minutes ago, Desertrat56 said:

It would have to be genetic material, not the actual animals since we won't be there in a viable way for a few decades.

If ever. Right now I can't see a viable way to get around the gravity problem on Mars (it has lower gravity, which leads to all sorts of problems for organisms not evolved to live in such an environment), or the energy problem.

The best I can figure is that they'd have to genetically engineer people and animals to cope with that gravity, and that by the time we have technology to "terraform" a planet (if we ever have that) there will be better energy sources that might work on Mars.

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I'll bring the popcorn machine, you bring the corn... 

~

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Maybe in another Hundred years If we survive ourselfs ! That will be the Big test Man has a way of self destruction !

 

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