> “Even if they succeeded, the obvious question is, what would you do with it?” said Stuart Pimm, a professor at the conservation ecology research unit at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. “If you had a Woolly mammoth, you would put it in a cage. It’s a colossal exercise in ego.”<p>This is my thought about all these efforts. The mammoth people talk like it's about a solution to climate change, but that's obviously working backwards from their goal (revive the mammoth for reasons) to some sort of reasonable-sounding justification. They set out with different motivations in mind.<p>I'd ask the same question here: why try to bring back a species we already killed off? These won't be descendants of the animals we killed, so it's hardly a form of reparations. If it's about preserving the ecosystems we already have, there have to be more efficient ways to do that than rebreeding less stripe zebras.<p>It's hard not to see this as just the same impulse that led to the poodle: because we can and because it will look cool and draw attention and make money. The only difference is there's a slight nostalgic bent to the aesthetic.