Noahs aim to save species

LONDON – Britain’s Frozen Ark project, aimed at safeguarding genetic material from a variety of species, boarded its first endangered passengers Monday, including an Arabian oryx, a spotted sea horse and a British field cricket.

The Frozen Ark, a project by three British institutions, doesn’t include any living animals but hopes to collect frozen DNA and tissue specimens from thousands of endangered species.

Like Noah, the scientists harbor hopes of repopulating the Earth.

“I think it will be used for cloning eventually,” said professor Alan Cooper, director of the Henry Wellcome Ancient Biomolecules Center at Oxford University.

“I believe you can make a case for bringing animals like, say, the tiger back. There would be a pretty strong argument for doing that versus letting them go extinct,” he said.

The principal collection will be set up in London at the Natural History Museum and the Institute of Zoology, and plans call for duplicate collections elsewhere in the world to safeguard the survival of the samples.

With some 10,000 species listed as in danger of extinction, the ark will fill quickly.

The project will be guided by the World Conservation Union’s red list of threatened species.

Professor Bryan C. Clarke, a population geneticist at Nottingham University, said the project will not immediately save any species from extinction.

“The Frozen Ark is not a conservation measure but rather a backup plan for when all best conservation efforts have failed,” he said.