Technoscience and Biodiversity Conservation

Abstract

The discovery of CRISPR/Cas9 has opened new avenues in gene editing. This system, usually considered as molecular scissors, permits the cutting of the DNA at a targeted site allowing the introduction of new genes or the removal or the modification of existing ones. The genome-editing, involving gene drive or not, is then considered with a strong interest in a variety of fields ranging from agriculture to public health and conservation biology. Given its controversial aspects, it is then no surprise that actors in biodiversity conservation do express conflicting views on this emerging and disruptive technology. The positions are ranging from a request for a moratorium to the will to test and deploy it in strategies aiming at eradicating invasive species of mammals on islands. Reviewing some of its recent developments brings light on the conflicts of interest, the financial support, and lobbying currently occurring in this growing field of biotechnology. While an optimistic view on the use of gene drive for ecosystem conservation was first promoted by several molecular biologists, the risks and uncertainties associated have now led to some reservations. Overall, the eventual use of this novel approach for conservation raises concerns related to the engagement of the public, the communication between scientists, and the public and the risk of a manufactured consent. There are also a series of essential ethical and philosophical questions on the relations we have with Nature that needs to be answered.

“The law of progress holds that everything now must be better than what was there before. Don’t you see if you want something better, and better, and better, you lose the good. The good is no longer even being measured.” Hannah Arendt (Interview with French writer Roger Errera, 1974. New York Review of Books)

Introduction

Genome-editing has received a lot of attention in the recent years after the discovery of CRISPR/Cas9, which is usually presented as molecular scissors given its property to cut and paste DNA. With such a potential to modify genetic information in an unprecedented manner, a variety of fields have seen possible applications for this technology. Medicine has seen the potential to target a dysfunctional gene in order to fix it and a number of malaria entomologists and epidemiologists are considering its potential use for vector control with CRISPR being used to engineer gene drive systems. Because of its highly disruptive nature and its biased (non-Mendelian) transmission, this latter approach has raised serious concerns among numerous groups, ranging from academics to farmers’ unions to groups involved in biodiversity conservation. Interestingly for the later field, the balance between the risks and benefits of genome-editing and gene drive use does not appear straightforward. The aim of this manuscript is then to present the recent developments of this new field of biotechnology, not mainly through the prism of the technological advances but with a particular focus on the evolution in the attitude towards its putative use in conservation biology. Finally, the manuscript is also going to question how such approach could impact the relations we have with Nature.

Conservation Biology

Conservation can be estimated to originate with the saving of seeds at the very beginning of agriculture (Given 1993). Clearly, this link gives conservation some utilitarian connotations as it was done for the purpose of growing staple crops. This is only recently, in the 70s and 80s, that conservation biology evolved as a scientific discipline. It has then been defined as “the development of appropriate scientific principles and the application of those principles to developing technologies for the maintenance of biological diversity” (Tangley 1988). Among its inherent and essential characteristics that make it somehow different from other disciplines are the facts that conservation biology is multidisciplinary per se. Indeed, it requires a variety of topics ranging from biogeography, ecology, pedology, to population biology, and it also have the characteristics to embrace novel concept such as conciliation biology that utilizes the predictive power of evolution for more sustainable outcomes in fast-changing communities (Carroll 2011). It can also integrate biotechnological novelties such as genomic research in order to, for instance, better understand bottleneck events in declining populations or even considering the potential input of genome-editing (Johnson et al. 2016). Conservation biology is also in tension between research and management, two complementary components between which cooperation and exchanges are essential. One of its other major aspects is the fact that this is a crisis discipline too (Soulé 1985). As such, it has sometimes to take action before all the information is available because time is critical and actions are often delayed until the brink of extinction.

Another key point with conservation biology is the existence of normative postulates that represent moral aspects of this discipline (Engel and Engel 1990) and value statement proposing a philosophy of ecological harmony and attitudes towards other forms of life. Thus, the postulates enunciated by Soulé (1985) are the following ones:

• diversity of organisms is good;

• ecological complexity is good;

• evolution is good;

• biotic diversity has intrinsic value.

Interestingly, conservation biology can be somehow trapped between no actions whose consequences can be easily evaluated (the increased risk of loss of the concerned species or ecosystem) or actions whose use could go along with improperly evaluated risks and consequences for both the target species and its environment. This latter point appears particularly valid with disruptive approaches whose control remains highly uncertain such as the use of methods relying on gene drive. However, the recent development in molecular and synthetic biology has led to the idea that gene editing and gene drive could bring useful tools and play a role in conservation biology.

Gene Editing and Gene Drive

Technical Aspects

Genome-Editing

The discovery of CRISPR/Cas9 has opened new avenues in gene editing. This system, usually considered as molecular scissors, is made of several genes permitting the cutting of the DNA at a targeted site with the use of an RNA-guided Cas9 nuclease. Cas9 has been isolated from “CRISPR” (Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats) acquired immune systems in bacteria and it is an enzyme that has the ability to cut a DNA sequence based on the complementarity to a 20-bp guide RNA (Sander and Joung 2014). This allows then the introduction of new genes inside the target organism as well as the removal or the modification of existing ones. Clearly this has enhanced the possibilities to genetically engineer the genomes of a variety of species ranging from plants (Belhaj et al. 2015) to insects (Bassett and Liu 2014), fungi (Shi et al. 2017), and vertebrates (Hwang et al. 2013).

The Particular Case of Gene Drive

An extension of this technological innovation has led to the possibilities of developing gene drive systems in an easier, simpler, cheaper, and more accurate manner than the previously existing methods. Basically, because it converts a heterozygote into a homozygote for the mutation of interest, a gene drive system permits the rapid spread of a DNA cassette into a target species, its inheritance being biased in favor of its transmission from one generation to the next one. Equally essential to the molecular ease with which a gene could be targeted, CRISPR-Cas9 is much less expensive than previously considered gene drive technologies. In theory, their use and deployment could permit the spread of a given trait of interest in a population or its eradication within a few generations (Burt 2003) Gene drives are then considered with a strong interest in a variety of fields ranging from agriculture to public health with the idea of modifying species so that they do not transmit parasite anymore or with the aim of eradicating pests. This latter option has obviously been considered for the eradication of the so-called invasive species. (Note that this is important here to consider that the meaning and concept of “invasive species” and their overall impact is the subject of discussions and debates in the scientific community (Davis et al. 2011; Thomas 2013) and that the dichotomy native vs alien is declining and can sometimes be considered becoming counterproductive (Carroll 2011).)

The expected potential of gene drive has then lead a number of organizations involved in public health research, policy, financial support, and governance to considering the potential of such a tool to control vector-borne diseases with a very strong interest. Concomitantly, this biotechnological approach has also received interest from groups involved in conservation biology. However, given its controversial aspects and the genetic modification of living organisms it is relying on, it is then no surprise that actors in biodiversity conservation do express conflicting views on this emerging and disruptive technology. The positions are ranging from a request for a moratorium to the will to test and deploy it in strategies aiming at eradicating invasive species on islands such as small mammals.

When Gene Editing and Gene Drive Meet Conservation

While a large part of applied research on gene drive has been dedicated to its potential interest in public health for the vector control of malaria in the lab (Gantz et al. 2015; Hammond et al. 2016; Hammond et al. 2017) or theoretically (Eckhoff et al. 2017), a substantial fraction of the research activities have also been considering that this technology could be useful in conservation program (Corlett 2017). Basically, the principle is very close to the one aiming at suppressing a population of mosquito vector, the idea is to suppress a population of a species that is considered a threat to native species.

A Place in Need for New Tools in Conservation? The New Zealand Situation

In the field of biodiversity conservation and the elimination of invasive species that pose a threat to a variety of local species, New Zealand is a particularly interesting case and the promoters of approaches relying on the use of gene drive–based approaches have shown interest in using their method in the country (Esvelt et al. 2014). New Zealand has indeed announced plans to become “predatory free” by 2050 (http://pf2050.co.nz/ and http://www.doc.govt.nz/predator-free-2050). It considers indeed eliminating a variety of species: the possum (Trichosurus vulpecula) and the stoat (Mustela erminea), as well as the Norway rat (Rattus norvegicus) and the ship rat (Rattus rattus), that are putting at risk the native wildlife. Interestingly, the Pacific or Polynesian rat (Rattus exulans) called Kiore in Māori language is also on that list even if its population in now restricted to the south of the South Island, being itself a victim of the competition with the other species of rats introduced later. Contrary to the other species of rats that have been brought by Europeans, this species is associated with the migration of Polynesian populations in the Pacific, and as such it has some cultural and spiritual values for some iwi (a social unit equivalent to a nation or a tribe) in New Zealand Māori society.

Gene Drive and Conservation: Benefit-Risk Analysis

Optimism with Caution

To date, organisms carrying an engineered gene drive have not been released in the environment but a number of groups have started considering it with interest for the control of small mammals. In 2014, a group of researchers led by K. Esvelt suggested the use of self-propagating gene drive system might be suitable for conservation (Esvelt et al. 2014). Up to now, the major cost-effective approach for the control of introduced organisms is mostly relying on Classical Biological Control (CBC) and its implementation requires a number of biosecurity challenges (Webber et al. 2015). Similarly, the eventual use of gene drive would also have to fit in with a number of stringent conditions related to a risk assessment both at the molecular level and at the populations and community ones. At the molecular level, the specificity of the agent for its target population or species is essential and the eventual off-target impacts have to be evaluated. One might indeed be worried as off-target mutations in the target genome could spread into related species if there any gene flow between the target species and others (Sander and Joung 2014). Interestingly, the evidence of such a risk of off-target impact for CBC is rarely tolerated (Webber et al. 2015). At the population level, the purportedly advantage of a gene drive approach resides in the ease and speed at which it can spread in the target population, including through the release of a very limited number of engineered individuals. The down side of this is obviously the related difficulty to contain the engineered organism and to avoid his dispersal to native and/ or non-target populations. Finally, invasive species are, apart for the damages they cause, often considered complete aliens in the environment where one wants to remove them and succeeding in removing them is considered as the expected positive outcome. This might be somehow simplistic as removing them does certainly not mean going back to the ecosystem that was present before their introduction and this might also be associated with the risk of another species taking place in a vacant niche. The speed at which the gene drive approach may function may also lead to unexpected disturbances in the ecosystem. Would any of these consequences occur, this would put at risk what was enunciated by Soulé (1985) as postulates related to diversity and complexity of ecological systems.

Reality

After optimistic views and a great confidence in the technology, there has been some sort of step back. Thus, Esvelt and Gemmell (2017) agree that the suggestion about the use of gene drive systems for conservation was a mistake. Scientifically, this has been based on theoretical papers that have revealed that releasing gene drive to fight back invasive species might not lead to the expected outcome. Basically, the gene drive is an invasive system but it may be more invasive than expected (Noble et al. 2018). The early confidence was related to the fact that the spread of gene drive would have to face the evolution of resistance to the drive (Unckless et al. 2017) but this appears not be enough and the authors wrote in their manuscript that “… standard drive systems should not be developed nor field-tested in regions harboring the host organism.” (Noble et al. 2018). This step back corroborates what was already mentioned in a previous paper highlighting the risk associated with gene drive approach when used, for example, to eliminate a non-native mouse population to protect a native species from an island (Kaebnick et al. 2016):

“Gene drives also might have harmful effects, especially to the environment. A drive designed to eliminate a non-native mouse population from an island to protect native species might pose threats to related species, to populations of the mouse elsewhere in the world, or to other species on the island that depend on the mouse population. The range of effects due to hybridization, geographic dispersal, and predator-prey interactions, for example, would need to be studied and the probabilities quantified. These are a few possible harms for one hypothetical use; given the present state of knowledge for gene drives, the outcomes and their probabilities are not yet well understood.” in (Kaebnick et al. 2016)

Overall, it appears that a risk-benefit analysis of the use of gene drive for species conservation may not yet turn in favor of using serenely an approach whose disturbances to the ecosystem are extremely difficult to predict. However, biological and ecological aspects are far from being the only questionable aspects of gene drive technology.

Gene Drive: Tensions and Conflicting Views

Lobbying, Governance, and Controversy

If gene drive has been considered of particular interest in a variety of fields because of its potential applications, it has raised ecological, cultural, and societal concerns that have even led to the call for a global moratorium in accordance with the precautionary principle (http://www.synbiowatch.org/gene-drives/gene-drives-moratorium/). This call was signed by more than 160 organizations worldwide ranging from the largest global organization of small-scale farmers La Via Campesina International (https://viacampesina.org/) to scientist coalitions including the European Network of Scientists for Social and Environmental Responsibility (ENSSER) (https://ensser.org/). It was addressed to the 2016 UN Convention on Biodiversity Conference to the Parties in Cancún, Mexico. At the end of the conference, this call was rejected but the agreement requested caution in field-testing the products of synthetic biology while supporting better risk assessment of the potential effects of the “products” including gene drive (Callaway 2016). The tensions and conflicting views about the use of research and use of gene drive highlight the need for public engagement and communication on this topic. Even if this is not focusing on the most recent and cutting-edge developments on synthetic biology, a vast literature has already been published discussing ways of engaging the public, the research community, and stakeholders (Macer 2005; Lavery et al. 2010). Concerning gene drive development and use, it appears clearly that questions about its governance and regulation remain unanswered. This is where transparency and openness has been claimed to be a potential solution (Esvelt 2017b). This request for openness derives from a statement present in the NASEM report “Experts acting alone will not be able to identify or weigh the true costs and benefits of gene drives.” (National Academies of Sciences 2016). Basically, by asking scientists getting involved in a process of registering their project, scientists and citizens could address their concerns upstream. If performed in an honest manner, this approach is then expected to favor an increased safety. The author also emphasizes that, instead of increasing controversy and risk assessments as those may be feared by scientists active in this field, this approach will reduce suspicion and adversity. Overall, this openness and collective approach appear not only beneficial for the lay-people but also for the promoters of this research topic and its applications.

While this may be considered seducing, the reality surrounding gene drive discussions and public engagement do appear quite blurry (Boëte 2018a; Boëte 2018b) and this is valid for several reasons. At first, there seems indeed to be a great concern about the public engagement and the establishment of guidelines for research on such a powerful tool that could lead to unprecedented, directed or not, changes on species and ecosystems. It has even been proposed that sponsors and supporters of gene drive research voluntarily adopt a code of ethical and scientific conduct (Emerson et al. 2017). The US Foundation of National Institute of Health (FNIH), a public health agency, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a well-known non-governmental organization, are signatories of that document and 11 other organizations have made commitment to honor the five principles for gene drive research that are presented in this document: the principle of advancing quality science to promote the public good, the promotion of stewardship, safety, and good governance principle, the principle of transparency and accountability, the principle of engaging thoughtfully with affected communities, stakeholders, and publics, and the principle of fostering opportunities to strengthen capacity and education. Despite this laudable goal, it is important to mention that, this initiative is a voluntarily one and, as such, the signatories are not legally binding and not accountable to any national or international institution if they violate it. This appears then that most is done about self-regulation and very little on democratic governance. A breach concerning the transparency has already occurred as revealed by the recent release of documents via US and Canadian open records requests done by civil society investigators: a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request by Edward Hammond/Third World Network and an Access to Information request filed in Canada by ETC Group. This release called the Gene drive files is available online through (http://genedrivefiles.synbiowatch.org/). This trove of correspondences between major actors in the field of gene drive research highlights several points: One is that the major financial contribution in the field of gene drive research comes from the US military agency DARPA, another one is the revelation of the implication of a privately-held public relations firm, Emerging Ag Inc., to influence the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) for Gene Drive governance. This latter point appears indeed problematic as this lobbying endeavor was financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for $1.6 million, whereas the Foundation is a signatory of the paper establishing guidelines and good practice for research on gene drive (Emerson et al. 2017). Finally and more in relation with the field of conservation is the participation in this lobbying endeavor at the CBD of two US entities, the NGO Island Conservation and the Genetic Biocontrol of Invasive Rodents (GBIRd) that are highly active in the use of gene drive against invasive mammal species.

Technoscience and Conservation: Mixing Oil and Vinegar?

Unsurprisingly, the use of genetic engineering is controversial and the field of conservation is among the most concerned one. GMOs have already been the subject of discussions and debates in agriculture for a variety of reasons (ecological, economical, social, farmers autonomy) as well as in public health with the use of genetically modified mosquitoes (not harboring a gene drive system) for the control of arboviruses, this is no surprise that gene drive are not necessarily well received by conservationists. As a sign of it, the existence of a call for Conservation with a Conscience: No place for Gene Drives in Conservation via an Open letter to the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) (Civil Society Working Group on Gene Drives 2016). A group a leaders and practitioners in the field of science, conservation, environmental protection, and law, led by the British primatologist and anthropologist Jane Goodall, has called in 2016 for a halt to all proposals in favor of the use of technologies relying on gene drive especially in conservation. They base their argumentation on several points in an ecocentric view and they are related to the ethical principle of non-maleficience, or do not harm. There is a need for precaution with new technologies given the past detrimental impact of human innovations, the potential for dramatic transformation of our natural world as well as our relationship with it, the need to restrain crossing a moral and ethical threshold associated with a never-existing power of modifying ecosystems and intervening in evolution. Apart from the biological, ecological, and evolutionary aspects, they have also concerns about other potential uses for military and agricultural purposes and the lack of governance and regulation of this technology.

Next Step: De-extinction?

When conservation has not been called or when it has failed, the outcome is the loss of a species. This has happens since centuries and examples of species that have disappeared are famous and spread all over the globe. To name a few: the dodo (Raphus cucullatus) on the Island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean, the Tasmania Tiger (Thylacinus cynocephalus) in Oceania, the golden toad (Incilius periglenes) in Central America, the auroch (Bos primigenius) in Eurasia, the Passenger Pigeon or wild pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) in North America. This are however only the tip of the iceberg as according to UN CBD the loss of species occurs at the alarming rate of dozen of species per day (Chivian and Bernstein 2008) with a consequence of the loss of one third to half of the species extinct by 2050 (Chivian and Bernstein 2008; Thomas et al. 2004). The magnitude of this loss is so high that it is difficult to grasp it and many species disappear even before scientists are able to discover and describe them. A clearly established aspect of this loss of species is that this is irremediable, at least this is what everybody thought for a while. There are however projects of de-extinction that are being now considered. After being the large contributor of species extinctions, humans are now considering the re-creation of lost species in what is now called de-extinction (Seddon et al. 2014). Clearly, what comes in mind is the Jurassic Park scenario with T. rex roaming around but dinosaurs are apparently not on the agenda. Other species such as the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) or the passenger pigeon (Ectopistes migratorius) are considered of interest for de-extinction, but as they are extinct, there is a need to work with a close species. Thus, de-extinction does not rely on cloning (the nuclear transfer of somatic cells harvested from a living individual into another recipient cell) but on gene editing. When considering the mammoth case, work on its de-extinction theoretically would consist in editing the genome of Asian elephants (Elephas maximus) in order to make it closer to DNA sequences from the woolly mammoths. The result would then be a hybrid animal whose DNA information is mostly the one of the elephant and to a lower level the one of the mammoth, basically something different from the extinct animal (Kaebnick 2017). If ecosystem conservation often goes along with species conservation, one might wonder in which ecosystem such a “mammothized elephant” is going to fit? The ecosystem in which we could release it existed thousands of years ago and, while it was gone, the communities of parasites, herbivores, predators, and plants have all evolved in its absence. How adapted would such a beast be? What behavior will it have? Are we expecting to create some sort of zoos with extinct species or recreate the whole ecosystem? Many questions remain open for which the technological promises of modern synthetic biology are not able to provide simple and firm answers. Again, ecological questions are going to be major aspects to estimate the soundness of such high-tech approaches. Once pseudo-resurrected species are released, how do we expect those species to live in ecosystems whose human-made modifications have sometimes been the cause of their extinction? How are they going to cope with climate change?

How many species are we expecting to revive? According to whose choice and recommendations? Is the ultimate endeavor of techno-scientists the creation of brand new animals for the purpose of increasing biodiversity? As the idea of modifying humans to colonize Mars is not even the far-fetched idea of sci-fi writers, why not creating a biodiversity for planets to colonize? (Wagstaff 2016). With the coupling between gene drive and transhumanism, sky is not even the limit. More down to earth, are we going to end up in a Nature that is going to be the genetic version of the “Jardin à la française” with a tame Nature, a sort of Genetic Jungle (Reeves 2012)?

Discussion

Clearly, key points with genome-editing and particularly with gene drive are the public engagement and the acceptability of a novel tool by potentially concerned communities. This is a matter of justice. After admitting that it was wrong to considering the potential use of gene drive to get read of invasive species in New Zealand and later having concerns about an approach done without even consulting Māori communities (Esvelt 2017a), it seems that we should not confuse haste and speed in such a sensitive field. This does not help establishing confidence in a truly needed two-way dialogue and this even adds to the negative impression that gene drive approach tends to give especially after the “Gene drive files” revelations. This area of research appears indeed too often aligned with the concept of scientific bandwagon (Fujimura 1988; Caulfield and Condit 2012). There is also a lot of hype and an inability to control the narrative around scientific disruptive innovations with potential applications. While this may have little impact on topic that are relatively a-political, such as particle physics (Nerlich 2013), this proves to be very different in politicized fields of research such as climate science or synthetic biology. This may indeed be detrimental for the debates on governance and regulatory aspects of novel technology and this has also negative aspects by providing overstate promise (Griffin 2017). Researchers, as well as journalists, scientific, and generalists ones, have a role to play when reporting the last scientific and technological advances and their potential applications.

The use of gene drive leads then to numerous questions and debates. They both deal with biological and ecological aspects as well as ethical and moral values: Could gene drive be used to control species we have introduced deliberately (sometimes to control another species), end up being the Russian nesting doll of ecological disasters? Do we need to modify the living to protect ourselves from it? Which relationships are we building with Nature? When considering the current decline of the Monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus) in the USA, the potential reasons for it might be the use of pesticide (neonicotinoids) and the habitat fragmentation as well as climate change (Thogmartin et al. 2017). If this species ever goes extinct and if there are inclinations to restore it, are conservationists and synthetic biologists going to gene-edit it so that I can deal with pesticide use? Are we going to keep the same agricultural practices as earlier, exploit natural resources, and degrade the environment as we do now once we’ll be able to fix problem with technical approaches later?

Overall, it seems that one might perceive the discourse of molecular biologists and promoters of high-tech approaches in conservation as if they were looking at justifications of their activities to get out of the lab not only for a better understanding of the nature complexity, species interactions, and ecosystems functioning but also rather for modifications of wild populations as powerful demiurges.

“Despite numerous advances, the field of molecular biology has often struggled to address key biological problems affecting public health and the environment …If we could develop a general method of ensuring that engineered traits would instead be favored by natural selection, then those traits could spread to most members of wild populations over many generations. This capability would allow us to address several major world problems, including the spread of insect-borne diseases, the rise of pesticide and herbicide resistance, and the agricultural and environmental damage wrought by invasive species”.in (Esvelt et al. 2014)

The genome-editing and the gene drive approaches appear then as very technological approaches to tackle problems whose complexity has often led to failure or limited success when technical solutions have been used at the detriment of an holistic approach fully considering ecological and environmental components. The projection of technological approaches to solve conservation programs seems loaded with both anthropocentric concerns over biocentric ones and our “hubris” to tame Nature and organize the wild in its genetic information according to our needs.

Conclusion

When considering the major drivers of biodiversity loss, the main ones are poaching, climate change, land use changes, urbanization, and invasive species (Beumer and Martens 2013). Concerning the latter ones, there is a general agreement that the prevention and mitigation of invasive species are difficult and costly mainly because the expanding global trade and movement (Banks et al. 2015). What is then clearly admitted is that those drivers of biodiversity loss are human-driven. How seductive, innovative, and disruptive the approaches we may bring with technological advances, we need to question the globalized world in which we are all immersed as well as the political and economical system that leads to such a destruction of the environment and the current biodiversity. As discussed about the concept of rewilding, it is tempting to consider that we should “direct our effort toward preserving the ecosystems and the wildlife that remain.”, being more practical than sensational (Rubenstein and Rubenstein 2016). Looking at recent data could clearly give anyone cold sweat. To name a few examples and projections: the catastrophic decline of 80% of the Grauer’s Gorilla (Gorilla beringei graueri), the world largest primate in one generation (Plumptre et al. 2016) because of civil war and insecurity in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC); the elephants population on the path to extinction: the African forest elephant (Loxodonta cyclotis) (Maisels et al. 2013), the African savannah elephant (Loxodonta africana) whose populations still suffer from illegal poaching (Wittemyer et al. 2014; Chase et al. 2016) or the Asian elephant (Elephas maximus) that has lost 85% of its historic range, and almost half of the remaining 15% is both fragmented and heavily impacted by an ever increasing human population (Goswami et al. 2014; Leimgruber et al. 2003). Coral reef is also experiencing a catastrophic dye-off that leads to modification of assemblages that are also changing because of a recent marine heatwave (Hughes et al. 2018). To make matter worth, a recent study reveals that such species as lions or tigers are also clearly on the brink of extinction despite their fame (Courchamp et al. 2018) while France’s bird population collapses because of pesticide use.

Our behavior has led to a major extinction crisis and the era we are entering has been called the Anthropocene. It corresponds to a radical change in our relationships with Nature and the ancient dichotomy between Nature and Culture. The concept of Anthropocene tends indeed to indicate that the relationships between Nature and Humans are profoundly modified. A fundamental separation between Humans and Nature, seen as provider of resources, where progress consists of its efficient exploitation by Human societies that have separated from Nature, seems now over (Descola 2005; Latour 1999; Morizot 2017). The changes that Humans have made on the Earth have now consequences in return (Bonneuil 2015). As those consequences are not equally shared by Human societies and because they are the results of the capitalistic and extractivist system some scholars have decided that this definition was not even fair and have decided to call this period the Capitalocene (Moore 2016; Malm 2017). The current perspective of roaming in a world with gene-edited animals and plants where interactions between species are based on our design, at the genome level, may lead scholars to calling Synbioscene the next period of the Capitalocene. More worrying than a definition of this new era and whatever the world of wilderness has any more meaning and reality in today’s world or not, the perspective of such a future appears as another evidence of the incapacity of men to solve issues in a global manner and in a cooperative way for biodiversity and environment conservation and to walk into approaches where technological progress still acts as our uncertain lifeline. Albert Camus (1944) wrote “Mal nommer un objet, c’est ajouter au malheur de ce monde”, which can be translated as “To call things by incorrect names is to add to the world’s misery”. When considering todays’ discourse about the biotechnical progress, there is a crucial and moral emergency to make sure that all its aspects, risks, and benefits are transparently presented and that communication and media coverage do not act as a manufacture of consent (Lippmann 1922; Herman and Chomsky 1988). This would help extracting ourselves from, what the philosopher Jacques Ellul (1988) called, the technological bluff.

Compliance with Ethical Standards

Conflict of Interest

The author declares no conflict of interest.