Eric Katz on ”De-Extinction”: Ontology, Value and Normativity

Eric Katz (1992) influentially argued that ecological restoration involves the ‘big lie’ that a successful restoration re-establishes or re-creates all of what was lost through human degradation, and that because of this we should be wary of restoration as a conservation practice and in conservation policy. In ‘Considering De-Extinction’ he makes the analogous argument against ‘de-extinction’ (Katz, 2022). Central to his critique is a claim about the relationship between ontology and value, as well as an inference about the normative significance of that relationship for policy and practice. In this response we argue that Katz is correct that there is a connection between ontology and value that supports (to some extent) his critique of ‘de-extinction’ as a preservationist activity, but it does not apply to all cases of creating genetic likenesses of individuals from extinct species (hereafter CGL) for conservation purposes. There can be cases where CGL is well justified from a conservation perspective. We begin with a reconstruction of the relevant portions of Katz’s argument.