Why would anyone be opposed to de-extinction?

[Scootaloo]

57. False on several levels

There are several ecosystems that are still reliant on animals that are now extinct.

For an example, have you ever thought about an avocado? No, probably not. Well, the avocado is the world's biggest berry, a huge seed wrapped in a fleshy pericarp. They grow on trees in these huge clusters. How do they spread, you might ask? Well.. .they don't do so very well. Those big heavy fruits fall right under the tree, where they rot - and the rotting tends to kill the seed. Which is far too large to be carried away by birds or rodents. So even if it sprouts, it's probably right beneath its parent tree, and is unlikely to survive competing. The same problem exists for several other American plant species, such as the paw-paw, osage orange, and agaves.

Now, it's very likely these plants evolved for their seeds to be carried around in something's gut and deposited elsewhere when it evacuates. Lots of plants do this (blackberries, for an easy example.) And indeed, all these plants' seeds can survive a trip through intestine-town. In fact avocados sprout more easily when their endosperm is weakened and a little damaged. Now the trouble is, obviously there's no wildlife large enough to gulp down a seed THAT large living in the Americas. Right?

Well, there used to be:

Yep. Ground sloths. We know this for a fact because we've actually found ancient sloth crap that contains these seeds. They were an essential part of the ecosystems in North and South America.

A similar problem exists on Mauritius, where a large number of the endemic plant species are reliant on being eaten and crapped out by dodos.

The taiga and tundra biomes are both evolved to be megafauna habitats as well; mammoths in particular. The Eurasian steppe developed with bison (wisent) and horses trampling and grazing all over the place - as did the American plains system.

And then we have places like Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii and Madagascar, which have all been HEAVILY disrupted by extinction.

Also that "they went extinct for a reason"? Yeah, the reason mostly being that they were presumably tasty. Or in the case of the dodo, because they were just easy for bored sailors to kill (Really, that's why they killed the birds, the flesh was apparently inedible - according to people who'd been living off rotten biscuit for a nine-month voyage.)

It would, in fact, be the opposite of "invasive." Now I suppose you could make some shortcuts - if you introduced Indian elephants to the Americas, they'd fill in for the ground sloths rather nicely, at least in forested habitat, and feral horses can easily take over for wild horses in the Americas. American bison could possibly fill in for the wisent, which is effectively extinct. So on and so forth.

Your argument that it'll make people stop worrying about endangered species is silly, because the process of de-extinction is VASTLY more of a pain in the neck than preserving what exists already. In terms of economy, it just makes way more sense to preserve endangered species and their habitat. In fact your earlier argument of "they went extinct for a reason" is the sort of thinking that leads to lack of preservation for endangered animals.