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Cloning the wild mouflon
Author(s) -
Heatherington Tracey
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
anthropology today
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.419
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1467-8322
pISSN - 0268-540X
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8322.2008.00559.x
Subject(s) - wildlife , biodiversity , indigenous , wilderness , environmental ethics , human cloning , endangered species , politics , ethnology , geography , political science , sociology , law , ecology , biology , population , demography , philosophy
In 2001, a collaboration between Edinburgh scientists and a research team in Teramo, Italy, made the first surviving clone of an endangered mammal: a wild sheep species called the mouflon, indigenous to the Mediterranean islands of Sardinia, Corsica and Cyprus. Amidst fierce debates on the ethics of cloning, this application of biotechnology to wildlife conservation appeared relatively felicitous. Will cloning techniques bring redemption for the immanent loss of genetic resources? How would this alter the very nature and culture of biodiversity protection? On an island of notorious shepherds, wilderness and wildlife are increasingly valued over the objects of traditional pastoral work. Set against the background of ongoing tensions over the creation of a new national park in Sardinia, the story of the cloned mouflon signified the power of new science to redefine the politics of biodiversity, undermining the cultural authority of shepherd towns over human‐animal relations.