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Modern Day Noah's Ark Dying
hype7 writes "The Sydney Morning Herald is running a story about the Monash Institute of Reproduction and Development's Gene Bank, which appears to be running out of funding. It seems a terrible shame, because the Bank has managed to accumulate thousands of Australian and foreign endangered species; a kind of modern day Noah's Ark. At the moment it's in limbo, using funds diverted from other projects to keep it in ER, but the prospects aren't looking good."
Hey, Noah only had to house the animals for forty days and forty nights, right? That seems like a waaaay smaller budget than these guys!
I find it hard to believe that all the effort they have put in will go to waste. Anyone know if they have tried other countries? I didn't see anywhere in the article where they actually went for funding. Is there a clause or something that prevents them from going outside the country to get funding? If all else fails, maybe Crocodile Hunter Steve can give them some cash, you know the Australia Zoo has a bunch of money coming in from Croc Hunter.
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[shakes head] Sounds like the government there really has it's priorities straight.
I mean, wouldn't even a tenth of the money spent on "protecting" the morality of the Australian websurfing public be better served by setting a good example and protecting the future of the planet?
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
Species rescue program faces extinction ... Professor Alan Trounson in the Gene Bank. Photo: Simon Schluter
... we always get a good hearing, but not the support financially."
"You can't create biodiversity. But it's something you can lose"
By Tom Noble
A program that saves the genetic material of threatened animal species faces a bleak future because of a lack of money.
The Gene Bank at the Monash Institute of Reproduction and Development has material from thousands of animals in storage, mostly native species facing extinction.
But work on storing new specimens and developing cloning techniques that could mean the survival of some species has been slowed because of no direct funding and little interest from corporate or private sponsors.
"I think it does say a little about our priorities, which I think is sad," said Alan Trounson, IVF pioneer and deputy director of the research institute that is a world leader in IVF and stem cell work.
"I don't know how many boardrooms we've been in, how many people we've seen
A key project has been on the northern hairy-nosed wombat, which once roamed across large areas of Victoria, Queensland and NSW. It is now Australia's most endangered mammal with fewer than 100 remaining, confined to a small area of the Epping Forest National Park in central Queensland.
The wombat's only hope of survival may lie in a silver barrel at the Gene Bank, where cell lines from more than 40 of the wombats (grown from little bits of flesh when the animals were given ear-tags) sit cryogenically frozen, ready to be cloned when the technology becomes available.
Set up in 1996 with a Federal Government grant and corporate sponsorship, the Gene Bank - dubbed a Noah's Ark of endangered animals - began by storing sperm and eggs taken from endangered animals that had died, often in zoos. The advent of cloning meant any part of the animal would do, as long as cell lines could be grown.
The cells of thousands of animals - mostly natives, but other endangered species such as the African black rhino - from dozens of species are now stored.
A modest amount of money has allowed the Gene Bank to survive, diverted from other institute programs. "It's been put into neutral for the time being," said Professor Trounson.
Requests from NSW authorities to store native fish taken during a clean-out of rivers, as well as an oyster species threatened by pollution and disease, cannot be met.
The Gene Bank, the only one of its type in Australia, has lost its technician and the laboratories used for the program face being taken over by a well-funded program on cattle breeding.
"You can't create biodiversity. But it's something you can lose," says Professor Trounson. "Every animal we lose that doesn't have a common close relative is a big problem. It's something you can never get back."
Since European settlement, at least 19 animal, 20 bird and three amphibian species have become extinct in Australia. Hundreds of species are now regarded as threatened.
"The community don't seem to care really deeply about biodiversity because they are not facing it every day. But it's a big concern among naturalists, conservationists and scientists. There's a decimation of these species."
If you celebrate Xmas, befriend me (538
This is the kind of thing that would lead to great things, if people continued support for it.
Would anyone please post information, if they know, pertaining to how we can donate to this museum? I think that many of us would like it.
"The community don't seem to care really deeply about biodiversity because they are not facing it every day. But it's a big concern among naturalists, conservationists and scientists. There's a decimation of these species."
The above quote was from the actual article. Their community doesn't care, for whatever reasons. Maybe they don't understand, maybe they don't know, maybe they're just shallow. But I think some of us may care.
We can use our computer skills to volunteer for them, maybe. Save them some money on hiring a designer for their web presence, making their databases more efficient, etc. This is what we're here for. Show the world that "hackers" do more good than harm.
PayPal $$ if you sign up for free offers (eBay, cred cards, e
You don't have to go to Australia to find lack of funding endangering valuable genetic resources; The National Seed Storage Lab in Colorado is in exactly the same boat...er, ark. Read about their funding problems here. An excerpt:
What does this lack of funding mean? It results in another major problem for the banks:
germination backlog, currently of about 30,000 samples at the NSSL. Periodic germination tests
are important to assure the quality of the samples. Also, since seeds will not store indefinitely,
they must periodically be removed, grown out for new seed, and collected. Says Major
Goodman, a crop scientist at NC State who investigated the status of the samples, "Evaluation,
regeneration and utilization are essential parts of a functioning germplasm system. Yet the entire
emphasis...is based upon acquiring larger and larger numbers of samples to be stored in so-called
seed repositories..." A more accurate name, according to Goodman, is "seed morgues." The
samples that are most at risk are older or unusual varieties that are rarely requested, and
germination potential of these samples deteriorates. According to NSSL director Steve Eberhart,
who estimates that it would take 25 years to catch up with the backlog, "We normally test seeds
every ten years to make sure they'll still viable...we've had to eliminate our retesting in order to
process new materials. We don't know which material is deteriorating because we don't have the
staff to the do the germination." For example, there are 30,000 varieties of corn from Latin
America with four scientists assigned to grow and evaluate them. Each person can do 30 varieties
a year, totaling 120. At that rate, it would take 250 years to evaluate them all! Many of the corn
varieties will not survive to be regenerated.
Or no doubt some biotech company might be willing to do so in return for rights to the contents and any future derivatives thereof...
Of course these sorts of prospects usually spur native donors and the project is thus "rescued" but it is sad that things come to such a crisis, particularly when the Australian fauna (and flora) are unique in the world.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Although I'm in awe for projects of this kind of size and the fact that it's all for the sake of preserving stuff that needs preventing to get lost, I always shake my head a little when I see projects like this. There's so much stuff to collect and archive... it's like google trying to make a complete usenet archive. Cool, nice, usefull occasionally and for sure a nobel act, but in the end, you'll have to give up sometime. There's simply no way you can archive anything of a certain size.
Sometimes you just have to let things go.
It reminds me of a professor here who 'collected' the time of death of people. He tried to find correlation between birth date and date of death (for the freaks : there IS a correlation !) After a few years he had hundreds of thousands of data, but refused to stop collecting. It became collecting for the sake of the collections.
When will I end this grieving ? When will my future begin ?
Seems to me the major expense in a program such as this is the long-term storage of the 'data' - and there doesn't look like there's an easy way over that obstacle.
I wonder, however, given the current thrust of the genome mapping projects around the globe if this issue can become irrelevant. With the ability to codify the genes in a species comes the ability to store the information in a much less expensive manner - and for much longer periods of time. Simply back it up to tape!
I know it's a fairly far off vision, but hey...
Culture is more than commerce
A program that saves the genetic material of threatened animal species faces a bleak future because of a lack of money.
What's the point in saving the actual genetic material? Storing the genetic code would make more sense, assuming that we can create the species from a given genetic code in the near future.
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Sorry. That was supposed to be PayPal.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
Wrong URL posted. Please moderate parent as overrated or offtopic.
Remember "Bring 'em on"? *sigh
We just need to build a large fleet of spacecraft, and place all these seeds in orbit around Saturn....
www.eFax.com are spammers
Why pick on politicians? In general, they are only doing what we want them to do. People want cheap steaks, cheap milk, and cheap leather. So the cattle farmers get the subsidies. We need to send everyone into the future to take a look at what those attitudes have done to mother earth.
In the case of the wombat, the two listed reasons for their decline are the introduction of grasses that have taken over the land that the wombats won't eat, and the introduction of cattle competing for the grasses the wombats do eat. Add to that the decline in habitat due to the spread of civilization, the introduction of feral cats, rabbits, and other non-indigineous creatures, predatory dingos who have been pushed out of their native hunting grounds, pesticides, acid rain, Microsoft (ok, don't know what MS has to do with it but I'm sure they're involved!), and well we've screwed up a lot. There's no easy fix.
But you know what? Send everyone 50 years into the future, and what do we have? 49 years before we really need to look for a solution- call me a pessimist if you'd like...
-- If god wanted me to have a sig, he'd have given me a sense of humor.
Figure out which two species are the least likely to go extinct, put one of each in a cage, and see which one lives. Murdoch will broadcast the results on Fox as "When Endangered Species Attack."
As unfortunate a statement as it may be about today's society, I believe that one the chief hindrances in this extremely worthy cause finding adequate funding is its poor public image.
Take for example the WWF (World Wildlife Fund). With their people-friendly, Panda Logo, they manage to secure millions of dollars of funding on an annual basis. Thanks in no small part to having this cute & cuddly, little monster as their mascot, the organization has been able to save numerous lesser-known and less adorable species from total extinction.
Alternatively, the Monash Institute of Reproduction and Development's Gene Bank, lists the far less lovable Northern Hairy-Nosed Wombat as a "key project"...
Should the fact that the northern hairy-nosed wombat does not closely resemble the fury little teddy bears we all grew up loving make it any less worthwhile in saving - of course not. Does it make it a more difficult sell to the public and subsequently corporations when attempting to secure research funding - what do you think...
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. -- Benjamin Franklin
With such an analogy to the Catholic religion, they might want to contact Noah's sole sponsor, or its local branch: The Vatican.
I DO NOT mean to be disrespectful in any way, but I'm pretty sure they still are the wealthiest entity on the Planet, right?
And preserving such richess can only be viewed as a valuable cause.
Just thought I'd mention it.
Cheers.
The San Diego zoo has dna from over 4000 species
on ice.
http://www.sandiegozoo.org/cres/frozen.html
Well, if the research is in danger, perhaps we could just take the DNA from all of the scientists involved and store them in some sort of bank. Then when society comes to its senses we could clone them and start the project over.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Yes, but we are the cause of this destruction in most cases (that is most cases in the past 150 years or so) while artificial preservation might be "unnatural" so is the level of habitat destruction that we have inflicted upon these species. The project is merely making a small attempt at checking the horrible damage that the human species has inflicted upon others.
I personally don't like the idea of a world with only animals that survive due to their ability to exist in urban settings or due to their usefulness to humans.
Though I suppose it would make biology simpler. Instead of so many confusing latin species names, we would only need to know "meatbeast, foodplant, pigeon, and rat"
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Saving DNA doesn't mean that we're saving the creatures.
Taking DNA samples from creatures on the verge of extinction keeps the doors of research open, which will hopefully lead to breakthroughs in medicine and biology.
If you can't have the animal, having the DNA is probably the next best thing. It's one more piece of the puzzle that we put together to figure out why extinction is happening in the first place.
Or is this one of those bits of knowledge handed out in those little paper tracts I toss away?
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
Riiiiight. They are dying because WE are killing them, flat out.
This is HARDLY necessary (nor intelligent).
Would it not also be true that if someone murders you, oh well? You just
weren't able to adapt properly to the fact that someone was out to kill you. You lost
the "struggle" and, thus, deserved to die.
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
It is not more a "natural" course than YOU becoming personally extinct because someone kills you. WE are the sole reason they are dying, no other reason. This is not a necessary, nor intelligent way for us to deal with the planet and its life. WE are responsible and we SHOULD be intelligent enough to STOP it and recover those that we've sent too far otherwise.
I think I'll kill someone and use YOUR defense: "Well, that loser was too weak and couldn't adapt to a world with ME in it. It's THEIR fault they are gone, it was only natural."
In Bushworld, they struggle to keep church and state separate in Iraq as they increasingly merge the two in America.
The Canopy Theory is one of the best examples of how "scientific" creationism is intellectually bankrupt. It sounds wonderful until you actually spend five brain cells thinking about it. (Note: fast order of magnitude calcs follow.)
Assume we have enough water in the atmosphere in the form of vapor to cover the earth 30k feet deep. All that water weighs exactly what it weighs in liquid form and thus presses down with that same force: IOW, the Earth would have had an atmospheric pressure equal to about that of a deep sea trench. Given that humans have major problems dealing with more than a few atmospheres when scuba diving, not likely. (Oh, that's right. God took care of that.)
How can we see under all that water, or plants photosynthesize? The ocean is pitch black from 300 or so meters down in even the clearest water. (God again)
Next, work out how fast the water actually fell. 10k meters/40 days*24hours = 10.4 *meters* per hour. No chance of breathing under that kind of deluge. (God fixed it, check)
How about the kinetic energy of that water? (Again, real fast calc-I may be off by an order of magnitude or more. Feel free to check.) You have 10 km worth of water falling at least 10km. PE converted to KE: PE is mgh: g = 10 m/s^2, h = 10km, mass = 4/3*pi*(r2^3-r1^3) *h2o density, where r2 = r1+10km, r1= earth radius of 6378140m. Mass is roughly 5e18 tons = 5e21 kg, PE = mgh = 5e26 joules. A big H-bomb puts out 1e17, so this an energy output roughly the equal of 5e9 H-bombs exploding. Where did all that energy go- oh yeah, God fixed it.
Where is the water today? Oh, that's right, God miracled it away.
There's no science here at all, just a pathetic rationalization of a biblical story. Even one "God fixed it" takes it out of science altogether.
Eric
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
This isn't an entirely off argument. After all, other species do impact the ecosystem in negative ways. However we alone are able to know what we are doing, and modify our actions accordingly.
Since we are intelligent, I think we can try to live in a way that creats the "best possible" world. If the best possible world means "as many people as we can possibly fit" to you then that's your opinion.
I prefer as interesting a world as possible. I can go out into the woods or travel to exotic localles and experience something totally different than the McWorld of developed America. While not everyone enjoys the great outdoors and unspoiled wilderness, the option should remain for our grandchildren.
So in short. Every species is a unique and irrecoverable product of evolution. Out of simple scientific curiousity, I would think we would want to keep as many of them around as possible.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
I mean, it's the longest lasting permanant deepfreeze that comes to my mind.
There are solid rock mountains there that could have caves dug in them and biomass placed there for some future time when more compassionate humanlike people live on earth.
I don't know about you but I don't know if I'd want to live in a world without animals and plants and nature.
Codifex Maximus ~ In search of... a shorter sig.
http://secure.metro.net.au/monashiv/donate.htm
That's the link to donate. Remember folks, that's in Australian dollars - roughly 2 AUD:1 USD
-- james
Man is causing extinctions at a thousand times faster than species could evolve naturally to cope with us.