“Especially this is written for those souls… who are prevented by the invincible decrees of Fate from ever seeing the wonders of the Wilderness save in the pages of a book.” - Dedication from Tales of an Empty Cabin by Grey Owl.

In 1931 Archibald Belaney, also known by his adopted Ojibwa name “Grey Owl”, wrote about the importance of conserving the beaver and its habitat.  A fur trapper and fantasist who falsely claimed Apache descent, the British-born Belaney was nonetheless one of the first and most effective “apostles of the wilderness”.  What would he have written today, in 2010, marked as the International Year of Biodiversity?  The latest update of the IUCN (the Cambridge based International Union for the Conservation of Natural Resources) Red List of Threatened Species states that 21% of all known mammals, 30% of all known amphibians and 12% of all known birds are threatened by extinction.  According to Jane Smart, director of IUCN’s Biodiversity Conservation Group “The scientific evidence of a serious extinction crisis is mounting”.  For many species, it is already too late.  The Yangtze river dolphin was declared extinct in 2006 after a failed six-week search.  The orangutan, our fellow Great Ape, is predicted to be ecologically extinct within 50 years.  Faced with accelerating rates of extinction worldwide, despite their best efforts, the conservation movement has been forced to go back to basics.

Biodiversity is defined as the “totality of genes, species and ecosystems of a region”.  This three tier approach is fundamental to how we classify biological variation.  It may also prove essential to how we manage conservation.  Historically, ecosystem diversity has been the dominant ideology amongst conservationists.  Habitat destruction is the primary cause of species extinction, so most conservation groups prioritise ecosystem preservation.  It makes sense: remove the rivers and where is the beaver going to swim?  Unfortunately, habitat preservation is often extremely difficult.  Many biodiversity hotspots are threatened by the twin pressures of human settlement and the development of land for commercial purposes.  The Amazon rainforest, which has the highest level of biodiversity in the world, is being deforested so rapidly that the Brazilian government recently announced it would be happy if, in 11 years’ time, the Amazon was being deforested at an annual rate of three cities the size of Sao Paulo.

The ecosystem-centered approach to conservation works in principle but fails in the all too frequent cases where habitat loss is unpreventable.  Conservation happens within national boundaries and as such issues of economics and sovereignty are bound to come in to play.  The pressure the West exerts on developing countries to preserve their natural habitats is often interpreted as an excuse for hindering the economic development of their competitors.  In the worst cases regions are preserved only to become expensive tourist destinations for wealthy foreign tourists, pockets of biodiversity nibbled at the edges by impoverished local communities denied access to the land.  Additionally, many developing nations regard biodiversity as one of their key resources and interpret attempts to store the DNA of their native species as imperialistic biopiracy masquerading as conservation.  The hostility and conflict generated by such approaches calls into question the motivations of conservation in a globalised society riven with inequalities.

Regardless of this debate one thing is certain.  Once a region’s ecosystem diversity has been critically reduced the species and genetic diversity fall like dominoes.  Conservation strategies focused on species level diversity, such as captive breeding programs, have long been used in such cases.  These programs are difficult to manage, as captive populations require regular influxes of fresh genetic diversity to avoid inbreeding.  The ultimate aim is the re-establishment of species in their original habitat.  The concern is that most captive populations face inevitable deterioration in artificial conditions, destined to become shadows of their former selves.

The most recent, and controversial, conservation strategy aims at the lowest level of the pyramid of biodiversity, genetic diversity.  Just as the species diversity approach to conservation depended on the emergence of the zoo, the genetic diversity approach is the result of advances in molecular biology.  The Frozen Ark Project, based at the University of Nottingham, aims “to conserve the genetic resources of the world’s most endangered animal species” by cryogenically storing their viable cells and DNA.  While the cost of sequencing entire genomes continues to shrink as technology improves the feasibility of storing the genetic code of an enormous variety of endangered species is increasing.  The scimitar-horned oryx, extinct in the wild since 2003, was the first animal to enter the Ark. 

The founders of the organization, Dr Ann Clarke and Professor Bryan Clarke, were inspired to start the project after they witnessed first hand the disastrous impact that human activity can have on biodiversity.  Speaking with me in Cambridge, Ann Clarke recalled how, while on a scientific expedition with her husband to collect tree snail specimens from the Polynesian islands, they noticed a worrying correlation.  While they found the snails they were looking for on uninhabited islands, on the islands with human populations they struggled to spot even single specimens of the snails.  The cause of this alarming decline was soon traced to the introduction of the predatory rosy wolf snail (Euglandina rosea).  Distressed by the rate at which local species were vanishing, they decided to do something about it.

For many of the snail species the extent of the damage to many of the island ecosystems was already irrevocable.  Traditionally, international captive breeding programs were the only solution to maintaining species when their original habitat was no longer viable.  However, such programs can take years to organise and are very costly, bad news in a sector where funding is always extremely competitive.  The Frozen Ark Project provides a relatively inexpensive way to preserve the essential elements of a species, in the form of viable cells, DNA and RNA.  In many ways it is a tragic reduction of a living organism.  However the alternative is extinction.

With each species that goes extinct a record is lost, an exquisitely detailed account of billions of years of life, each one unique but all interconnected and sharing a common starting point.  The DNA of species is worth preserving if only for the grandeur of the story it tells.  It is a story in a language we still cannot fully comprehend.  If efforts are not made to preserve the DNA of species nearing extinction then there will be gaps, hundreds of missing pages, in the story.  Beyond this the DNA not only provides a history of the past, it may also provide a hope for the future. 

While the prospect of resurrecting species from their DNA alone remains a tantalising (and ethically fraught) possibility, the modus vivendi of the Project is to preserve the genetic record of species so they may be studied for their scientific insights.  There are voices within the conservation movement calling such approaches defeatist, diverting critical resources from the preservation of existing species and ecosystems.

What would Belaney have made of these modern approaches to conservation?  No doubt he would have struggled to see beaver DNA in storage as a substitute for beaver thriving in the woodland habitat he loved.  Nor should we lose sight of his mission.  Twenty-first century conservation will depend on the successful integration of all three levels of biodiversity management – genes, species and ecosystems.  For example, genetic conservation can strengthen species conservation by providing the genetic diversity to reinvigorate captive populations.  If, acting together, they can prove to be more than the sum of their parts, then we may yet lay claim to old Grey Owl’s approval.