the frozen ark

a long time ago i wrote about the global seed bank on the island of spitsbergen. the idea of the seed vault is to protect farmers - and by extension the human race - from the economic, ecological, and social dilemmas that would accrue due to the loss of seed samples as a result of mismanagement, accident, equipment failures, funding cuts or natural disasters

the subject of today’s entry is of a similar ilk in that there is now a program called ”the frozen ark” that is devoted to the cause of “saving the dna of endangered species”. if you feel some sort of apocalyptic apprehension about such a place, well if you read the piece about the seed bank then you’ll probably be rushing out after this to lay in stocks of water, hand wound radios, grey water processing systems, candles and goodness knows the list is long!

the mandate of “the frozen ark” is very similar to that of the global seed bank with one additional rider. its purpose is to recognize that global climate change, human urban growth patterns, and the destruction of ecosystems have and will continue to cause entire species to disappear at a rate matched or exceeded on only three previous occasions during the history of our planet. it is understood that over the next thirty years, more than 1,000 species of our mammals, a quarter of the worlds' total, and a similar number of birds, face extinction. it is not known what the effect of this will be on the planet but intuition and scientific knowledge are almost certainly parallel in their sense that regardless of your perspective it cannot be for the better.

the frozen ark dna samples are not stored in a single location but are in fact spread around several institutions who have established as their goal the collection and storage of 16,000 dna samples representing those species that are presently under threat. for more comprehensive information about the frozen ark you might like to read this article.

here is one example of a creature that has been selected for inclusion in this amazing and timely project: the partula snail

polynesian tree snails (partula) include over 100 species that live on volcanic islands in the pacific. they have become endangered as a result of efforts to control the african land snail, introduced in 1967. the government introduced a predatory snail to eat the african land snail, but the predatory snail attacked the partula instead. oops!