> ENN Worldwire News for Monday, July 3, 2000
>
> The Australian Museum in Sydney is on a mission improbable: to bring an
> extinct species back to life. They hope to clone a 134-year-old
> preserved Tasmanian tiger pup at the Australian Museum in Sydney.
> Because the young animal was preserved in alcohol instead of formalin,
> its DNA was not destroyed. The plan is to use that genetic material to
> clone the pup and eventually reintroduce the extinct species into the
> wild.
>
> Conservationists such as Tasmanian Senator Bob Brown, former director of
> The Wilderness Society in Australia, say the emphasis should be on
> habitat protection instead of cloning already extinct species.
> Tasmania's forests are being logged, burned and poisoned at such a rate
> that the tigers would soon have nowhere to return to anyway, he says.
>
> Other critics argue that humans should not interfere with the natural
> process by resurrecting extinct animals.