Cloning the wild mouflon

Bibliographic Data

ID2265112
AuthorsT Heatherington (0009-0008-4921-4989, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee, corresponding author)
Year2008
Volume24
Issue1
Pages9-14
Publication date2008-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnthropology Today (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0268-540X • E-ISSN: 1467-8322
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1467-8322.2008.00559.x
OpenAlexW1963630917
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited36

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

Biodiversity · Biology · Endangered species · Environmental ethics · Ethnology · Geography · Human cloning · Indigenous · Political science · Politics · Population · Sociology · Wilderness · Wildlife · Animal Genetics and Reproduction · Demography · Environmental Philosophy and Ethics · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Ecology

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