Does extinction have to be forever?  As the global extinction crisis accelerates, conservationists and policy-makers increasingly use advanced biotechnologies such as reproductive cloning, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and bioinformatics in the urgent effort to save species.  Mendel's Ark considers the ethical, cultural and social implications of using these tools for wildlife conservation. Drawing upon sources ranging from science to science fiction, it focuses on the stories we tell about extinction and the meanings we ascribe to nature and technology.  The use of biotechnology in conservation is redrawing the boundaries between animals and machines, nature and artifacts, and life and death.  The new rhetoric and practice of de-extinction will thus have significant repercussions for wilderness and for society. The degree to which we engage collectively with both the prosaic and the fantastic aspects of biotechnological conservation will shape the boundaries and ethics of our desire to restore lost worlds.

Table of Contents:
1 The Future of Extinction 1.1 Goodbye to the Baiji 1.2 Hello to the Anthropocene 1.3 Wicked Problems and Socio-Technical Imaginaries 1.4 Telling Stories about Extinction 1.5 Taking Control of Nature’s Realm 1.6 The Once and Future Baiji References 2 A Political History of Extinction 2.1 From Eden to Extinction. . . and Back Again? 2.2 Fossils and Frontiers: Debating ExtinctionDuring the Enlightenment 2.3 The Politics of Extinction in the Progressive Era 2.4 Spaceship Earth: Twentieth Century Environmentalism 2.5 Climate, Catastrophe and Conservation Biology 2.6 Everything Old is New Again: Biotechnology and De-Extinction References 3 Bio-Inventories: The Digitization of Nature 3.1 They Had to Count Them All: Bioinformatics and DNA Barcoding 3.2 Cracking the Code of Life: Bioinformatics in the Twentieth Century 3.3 The Encyclopaedia of Life 3.4 A Barcode for Every Species 3.5 Digital Natures References . 4Bio-Interventions: Cloning Endangered Species as Wildlife Conservation 4.1 Is Nature Over? 4.2 The Molecular Frontier: Biotechnology and Life as Code 4.3 FromWistar Rats to Oncomice: Engineering Animals 4.4 Dolly and Polly: Animal Cloning Hits the Big Time 4.5 Noah’s Ark: Cloning on the Edge of Extinction 4.6 Preservation in a Petri Dish References .5 Bio-Identities: Cloning the Recently Extinct 5.1 Liminal Lives: The Biopolitics of De-extinction . 5.2 The Past Comes Alive: Ancient DNA as Time Travel 5.3 Tasmanian Tiger Tales 5.4 Spectacular Science 5.5 Pickled Pups and Promises 5.6 Reviving and Restoring5.7 See It Now, While It’s Still Extinct References 6 Bio-Imaginaries: Bringing Back the Woolly Mammoth 6.1 Entering the Hall of Extinct Monsters 6.2 How to Resurrect a Woolly Mammoth 6.3 Engineering Life: Synthetic Biology 6.4 In Search of Lost Worlds References