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This article discusses a Czech zoo taking action to protect their rhinos, after an incident at a French zoo where a young rhino was killed and left with one horn cut off and the other somewhat removed. To prevent future incidents such as this, the Czech zoo has come to the conclusion that cutting of their 18 rhinos' horns will help protect them in the long run. The goal of this is to prevent poachers from breaking into zoos and taking these valuable horns for themselves. A white rhino horn is sold for around $3000 today and can often be found for 5-10 times as much on various Asian black markets. Although rhino's use their horns to protect their children and protect themselves against predators, they do grow back and cutting them off can decrease fighting as well.

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The situation for rhinos is now so dire that one zoo is taking the drastic step of cutting the horns off its 18 rhinos to keep them safe.

A Czech zoo will anesthetize the animals and use a chainsaw to remove their horns, the Guardian reported. "It's for the sake of rhino safety," Andrea Jirousova, spokeswoman for the Dvur Kralove zoo said.

The zoo's decision follows a break-in at a French zoo last week that resulted in the death of one of the facility's white rhinos, five-year-old Vince. One horn was hacked off and the other was partially cut off. The incident is believed to be the first time a rhino has been killed at a zoo.

"The attack [in France] put us on the alert-the danger is really intense," Jirousova said.

Rhino horns are in demand in Vietnam and China, where they're made into valuable carvings and erroneously used as a cure-all in traditional medicine. Last year, poachers slaughtered 1,054 rhinos in South Africa, home to about 70 percent of the world's remaining 29,500 rhinos. (Read more: Inside the Deadly Rhino Horn Trade)

It's illegal to kill rhinos, and selling their horns between countries has been banned since 1977 under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Fauna and Flora (CITES), the 183-government body that regulates the global wildlife trade.

Yet for poachers the reward is often worth the risk of getting caught. On the black market in South Africa, the horn of a white rhino-of which some 21,000 remain in the wild-sells for up to $3,000 a pound, but on Asian black markets it wholesales for five to 10 times that. Retail prices increase from there.

Dvur Kralove now has a mix of 21 southern white rhinos and black rhinos, which are critically endangered. The herd includes three calves, who will not undergo the surgery, the Guardian reported.

"This incident shows how security is increasingly important for zoos in Europe, as well as for conservationists working in rhino range states," Katherine Johnston, spokesperson for London-based Save the Rhino International, told National Geographic after the poaching at France's Thoiry Zoo on March 7.

Rhino owners and conservationists in Africa have already taken the extreme step of de-horning their animals to ward off poachers. Rhino horns grow back.

Save the Rhino International says that rhinos use their horns, made mostly from keratin (which our fingernails are made of), to defend their territories and to protect calves from other rhinos and predators. But dehorning has also been shown to reduce fighting-related deaths among some rhinos.

Read more stories about wildlife crime and exploitation on Wildlife Watch. Send tips, feedback, and story ideas tongwildlife@natgeo.com.

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Czech Zoo to Dehorn Rhinos After Paris Poaching Attack

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The situation for rhinos is now so dire that one zoo is taking the drastic step of cutting the horns off its 18 rhinos to keep them safe. A Czech zoo will anesthetize the animals and use a chainsaw to remove their horns, the Guardian reported.

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Although Seaworld in the United States has stopped breeding Orcas, this article discusses China beginning to bread this species of whales in their parks. They have not commented on the situation, but their website states that this is merely to raise awareness for these creatures, encourage their conservation, and advertise the breeding of the species. Given that it is already proven that whales and dolphins live longer in the wild, it is concerning to scientists that China may be starting something that we are trying to prevent. These whales are also extremely intelligent thus, being kept in a  small compact living space is not optimal and can cause the species to stress, bite, or constantly swim in circles. Other issues with keeping these creatures in captivity include: their specific diet of sea l ions and seals, and China's lack of legislation regarding animal captivity.

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SeaWorld announced a year ago that it would end orca breeding at its parks in the U.S. One year later and nearly 8,000 miles away in China, another such program is just getting started.

The Chimelong Group, one of the country's biggest amusement park operators, revealed that it opened a breeding center for orcas on February 24 at Chimelong Ocean Kingdom-the first program of its kind in China. Located in Zhukai, a city in the southeast, the park has five males and four females ranging in age from five to 13. The orcas, also known as killer whales, were plucked from Russia's Sea of Okhotsk, according to the China Cetacean Alliance, a coalition of international conservation organizations.

On its website, the company says it aims to "raise public awareness about killer whales and their conservation status" and "conduct research." It adds that it plans to build a marine science museum where the orcas will be displayed. It will also work with other facilities to "promote the breeding of killer whales."

It's unclear whether the orcas will perform. Nonetheless, concern by conservation groups in China over their welfare, as well as the prospect of other parks opening breeding centers, has mounted since the Chimelong announcement. The park hasn't responded to a request for an interview.

Shifting Away From Captive Orcas

Orcas are the largest dolphin species and one of the smartest predators in the world. Scientists say that the lack of stimulation and cramped, unnatural conditions in captivity can stress them out, manifesting in stereotypic behavior such as biting and swimming in circles repeatedly. Whales and dolphins die much younger in captivity than in the wild, according to Whale and Dolphin Conservation, a U.S.-based charity dedicated to the animals' protection.

But unease over the well-being of the orcas at Chimelong extends beyond these broad concerns.

For one thing, the orcas could be family because they were captured from the same habitat in Russia, says Taison Chang, chairman of the Hong Kong Dolphin Conservation Society, a nonprofit devoted to the protection of cetaceans-meaning dolphins, whales, and porpoises. "If they're related, sooner or later they'll find some genetic diseases in the orcas because they'll keep inbreeding," he says.

Their diet could also pose a problem, according to Chang. Employees feed them fish, the Chimelong Group says, but researchers believe that wild orcas in the Sea of Okhotsk eat only mammals such as seals and sea lions. And the male-skewed sex ratio may lead to destructive aggression, he says, given that male orcas are naturally feisty and may fight to win a mate.

"I will be personally astonished if these animals successfully breed," says Naomi Rose, a marine mammal scientist with the U.S.-based Animal Welfare Institute.

Growing awareness about the problems associated with captive cetaceans have led marine parks around the world to shut down or redefine themselves. In recent years a handful of countries, including India and Switzerland, have banned the keeping of orcas in captivity.

Public scrutiny intensified after the 2013 release of the documentary Blackfish, which cast a critical eye on the marine entertainment industry. SeaWorld, one of the best known marine parks, ended orca breeding and some of its shows in 2016, after years of declining ticket sales and decreased profits. (Read more about SeaWorld's decision to end orca shows and breeding.)

"Changing the tanks or the style of show is not going to meaningfully relieve the animals of suffering," said Jared Goodman, PETA Foundation's director of animal law, in a statement after SeaWorld's announcement last year. "The movie Blackfish was the beginning of the end for the practice."

A Burgeoning Industry

China appears to be immune to the "Blackfish effect," the term often used to describe the public's response to the film. In fact the country's marine park industry is booming, with 44 facilities today, up from 39 in 2015, according to the China Cetacean Alliance. Nineteen more are scheduled to open in the next two years.

Chang thinks Chimelong has paved the way for more orca breeding in China. "The facilities in China will be like a photocopier machine," he says.

According to Chang, two other parks-Shanghai Haichang Polar Ocean Park and Linyi Polar Ocean Park-plan to import, or have already imported, orcas from Russia, which sets a yearly quota for the number of orcas that can be taken from the wild. This year, it's 10. (The practice of taking orcas from Russian waters is controversial because little is known about their numbers. "You can't determine a sustainable number if you can't determine a population to start with," Rose explains.)

China's marine park industry got started only about ten years ago, Chang says, whereas people in the West have been familiar with marine entertainment for decades. "Today a lot of Chinese people are still very interested in the whole idea of seeing animals in captivity," he says.

Other Asian countries, notably Japan, also boast marine parks, but Chang says China stands out as the only nation that's expanding the business at such an aggressive rate.

In addition to ocean theme parks, shopping malls, restaurants, and other unorthodox venues increasingly feature bears, walruses, and other wildlife to attract customers. A polar bear named Pizza gained international attention in November 2016 after video surfaced of him pacing and pawing at a vent in a barren enclosure at a Chinese mall.

China has no federal animal welfare laws, and amendments to the country's primary conservation law specifically allow animal performances at privately owned safari parks, marine parks, aquariums, and circuses.

But Peter Li, Humane Society International's China expert, previously told National Geographic that there's a growing awareness among China's young about animal welfare. And groups like Chang's hope to hold facilities accountable through investigations and public awareness efforts. Chang says he doesn't want to put parks out of business, but he does want them to consider other ways of educating the public about whales and dolphins.

That's an idea whose time has come- new technology is already allowing people to witness the splash of a virtual whale just feet from where they stand.

Read more stories about wildlife crime and exploitation on Wildlife Watch. Send tips, feedback, and story ideas tongwildlife@natgeo.com.

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China's First Orca Breeding Center Sparks Controversy

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SeaWorld announced a year ago that it would end orca breeding at its parks in the U.S. One year later and nearly 8,000 miles away in China, another such program is just getting started.

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In this article a fish biologist discusses the importance of the Mekong River Basin and how crucial it is to provide it with a "sustainable future". To do so he has put together a program called The Wonders of the Mekong. This river is home to some of the largest fish and the world and flows through some of the most beautiful places in the world as well. Its combination of production and biodiversity is like no other. There are also more than 300 million people who inhibit the area that the river flows through, and it is essential that they are able to continue their traditions and cultures while simultaneously being aware of the affects they have on the river too.

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Zeb Hogan recalls the sense of wonder he felt when, as a fresh-eyed fish biologist, he first came to Southeast Asia some 20 years ago and encountered the Mekong River. Having grown up in the Arizona desert, where the rivers seldom held any water, let alone fish, it was quite the shock for the young Fulbright student to step into the most productive river system in the world.

"Everything was vivid and alive," said Hogan. "It was like seeing the world through a new lens. The contrast with Arizona could hardly have been more extreme."

His exchange program eventually ended, but Hogan was soon drawn back to the Mekong. Over the years, he spent more and more time in the region, immersing himself in the cultures of Thailand and Cambodia, two of the countries through which the Mekong River runs. Focusing his research on migratory fish, he became an expert on the endemic Mekong giant catfish, which holds the world record for the largest freshwater fish ever caught at 646 pounds (293 kilos).

Now, two decades later, Hogan, who is a National Geographic fellow and the host of the television show Monster Fish on Nat Geo Wild, is leading a new, five-year research project, supported by USAID, called "The Wonders of the Mekong," which brings together a multi-disciplinary team of researchers in an effort to generate greater awareness of one of the most extraordinary ecosystems on Earth.

The project is starting at a time when the Mekong River Basin, which supports more than 60 million people, is undergoing huge transformation. While the river itself-long relatively untouched-is changing due to the building of dams, climate change, and habitat loss, larger economic and political forces are reshaping an entire region rich in culture and history.

"In my opinion, the Mekong River is the most important river in the world," Hogan said, speaking ahead of the project launch in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital.

"But the Mekong River is now at a tipping point, where the choices made in the next 10 or 15 years could make or break the life it sustains."

The Serpent of Southeast Asia

Originating high in the glaciated mountains of Tibet, the Mekong River is fed by the same headwaters that supply China's Yangtze and Yellow Rivers. In China, the river is called Lancang, changing its name to the Mekong as it crosses into Laos and Myanmar.

It continues to flow through some of the most spectacular scenery in the world, including the forested mountains of the Golden Triangle, an area notorious for its opium production. For hundreds of miles, the river forms the border between Thailand and Laos. Later, in what may be its wildest stretch, it turns into a series of swirling rapids known as Khon Pi Long, or "where the ghost lost its way," passing through an archipelago of 4,000 islands, many of them dotted with temples and shrines, as well as the world's widest waterfall, before finally leaving Laos and dropping into Cambodia.

There, it forms deep pools sheltering the world's largest freshwater fish before running into the vast flood plains and flooded forest that drive much of the region's productivity. It is joined by a tributary that changes direction every year and connects it with Tonle Sap Lake, Southeast Asia's largest inland lake and "the beating heart of Cambodia." Later, in Vietnam, it runs through rice plantations with a special breed of floating rice growing meters tall in pace with rising floodwaters, before splitting into nine branches known as "the nine dragons," and eventually disgorging into the South China Sea.

"The Mekong and associated tributaries are wonderfully large, interconnecting with their landscape during wet season and retreating into their channels during the dry season," said Sudeep Chandra, director of the University of Nevada Global Water Center, which is coordinating the research.

"The scale of this connection in the Mekong is like no other, as evidenced by the vast amount of biodiversity and production of fishes that comes out of the system annually," he added.

World's Biggest Inland Fishery

The Greater Mekong region is in fact one of the most biodiverse areas in the world. It contains no fewer than 20,000 species of plants, 1,200 bird species, 800 kinds of reptiles and amphibians, and 430 species of mammals, including Indochinese tigers, Asian elephants, and the critically endangered Irrawaddy dolphins.

The river itself supports almost 1,000 different species of fish, ranking it second only to the Amazon in terms of fish diversity. It also has more giant fish than any other river on Earth, from giant freshwater stingrays to 500-pound carp.

"The Mekong River is heaven for a fish biologist," said Hogan. "It is superlative in every way. But it is also a region at risk.

"Cambodia is a last refuge for biodiversity teetering on a knife's edge, and many of the largest, most iconic animals are on the brink of extinction."

In part for that reason, the project headquarters will be in Phnom Penh. Of all the countries connected to the Mekong, none is more closely intertwined with the river than Cambodia, sitting as it does at the heart of the largest inland fishery in the world. According to some estimates, the Mekong River Basin produces more than three million tons of fish a year, accounting for an astonishing quarter of the global freshwater catch.

Its fertile delta also helps to feed the world's growing appetite for rice. In 2014, Cambodia and the other lower Mekong countries produced more than 100 million tons of rice, around 15 percent of the world's total. The endless rice plantations seen throughout central Cambodia depend on the nutrient-rich sediments that the Mekong carries downriver, mainly during the rainy season from June to October.

Indeed, what happens at one end of the Mekong River has a strong impact on what goes on in another. Experts are particularly fearful that the construction of a series of dams in Laos and other areas in the upper reaches of the Mekong River and its tributaries will destroy crucial habitat for migrating fish and could ultimately lead to the extinction of many vulnerable fish species, such as the critically endangered "giant pangasius," a predatory species also known as the "dog-eating" catfish that can grow up to 10 feet long.

From Holistic Science to Sustainable Economics

While economic growth has steadily increased in the region, many of the countries remain mired in poverty. Economic pressures, including the demand for land for industrial agriculture, the unsustainable harvesting of not only fish but also high-value timber, and the impact of rapid urbanization, are intensifying.

"We have to recognize the need for economic growth," says Hogan. "Development and conservation must work in tandem. It can't be an either-or proposition."

Almost as striking as its biodiversity is the Mekong region's cultural diversity. There are more than 300 million people from nearly 100 distinct ethnic groups living in the Greater Mekong area. It also has a rich cultural and historical heritage. It is home to the northern Lao city of Luang Prabang, an epicenter of the Buddhist faith, as well as the ancient cities of the Angkor empire, the biggest urban complex of the preindustrial world.

"The goal of this project is to meld an understanding of the current science on biodiversity, climate, and hydrology of the Mekong River Basin with a historical and archaeological understanding of this system to point toward a sustainable future," said Hogan.

"Given the importance of a healthy, connected Mekong to people, fish, and wildlife, the decisions made today are critical to the future of the region."

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Can the Amazon of Southeast Asia Be Saved?

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Zeb Hogan recalls the sense of wonder he felt when, as a fresh-eyed fish biologist, he first came to Southeast Asia some 20 years ago and encountered the Mekong River. Having grown up in the Arizona desert, where the rivers seldom held any water, let alone fish, it was quite the shock for the young Fulbright student to step into the most productive river system in the world.

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This article discusses the continuous issue that our coral reefs are suffering. Much of the Australian Great Reef is dying off due to water temperatures that are just too high. One of the biggest causes of this is the burning of fossil fuels by humans which leads to an increase in water temperature. The Australian Great Reef provides around 70,000 jobs and billions of dollars per year due to tourism, and the influences of this situation on the economy are still unknown. For the most part it is a matter of whether or not these reefs will be able to sustain themselves as humans continue to exert pressure onto them.

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SYDNEY, Australia - The Great Barrier Reef in Australia has long been one of the world's most magnificent natural wonders, so enormous it can be seen from space, so beautiful it can move visitors to tears.

But the reef, and the profusion of sea creatures living near it, are in profound trouble.

Huge sections of the Great Barrier Reef, stretching across hundreds of miles of its most pristine northern sector, were recently found to be dead, killed last year by overheated seawater. More southerly sections around the middle of the reef that barely escaped then are bleaching now, a potential precursor to another die-off that could rob some of the reef's most visited areas of color and life.

"We didn't expect to see this level of destruction to the Great Barrier Reef for another 30 years," said Terry P. Hughes, director of a government-funded center for coral reef studies at James Cook University in Australia and the lead author of a paper on the reef that is being published Thursday as the cover article of the journal Nature. "In the north, I saw hundreds of reefs - literally two-thirds of the reefs were dying and are now dead."

The damage to the Great Barrier Reef, one of the world's largest living structures, is part of a global calamity that has been unfolding intermittently for nearly two decades and seems to be intensifying. In the paper, dozens of scientists described the recent disaster as the third worldwide mass bleaching of coral reefs since 1998, but by far the most widespread and damaging.

The state of coral reefs is a telling sign of the health of the seas. Their distress and death are yet another marker of the ravages of global climate change.

If most of the world's coral reefs die, as scientists fear is increasingly likely, some of the richest and most colorful life in the ocean could be lost, along with huge sums from reef tourism. In poorer countries, lives are at stake: Hundreds of millions of people get their protein primarily from reef fish, and the loss of that food supply could become a humanitarian crisis.

With this latest global bleaching in its third year, reef scientists say they have no doubt as to the responsible party.

They warned decades ago that the coral reefs would be at risk if human society kept burning fossil fuels at a runaway pace, releasing greenhouse gases that warm the ocean. Emissions continued to rise, and now the background ocean temperature is high enough that any temporary spike poses a critical risk to reefs.

"Climate change is not a future threat," Professor Hughes said. "On the Great Barrier Reef, it's been happening for 18 years."

Corals require warm water to thrive, but they are exquisitely sensitive to extra heat. Just two or three degrees Fahrenheit of excess warming can sometimes kill the tiny creatures.

Globally, the ocean has warmed by about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the late 19th century, by a conservative calculation, and a bit more in the tropics, home to many reefs. An additional kick was supplied by an El Niño weather pattern that peaked in 2016 and temporarily warmed much of the surface of the planet, causing the hottest year in a historical record dating to 1880.

It was obvious last year that the corals on many reefs were likely to die, but now formal scientific assessments are coming in. The paper in Nature documents vast coral bleaching in 2016 along a 500-mile section of the reef north of Cairns, a city on Australia's eastern coast.

Bleaching indicates that corals are under heat stress, but they do not always die and cooler water can help them recover. Subsequent surveys of the Great Barrier Reef, conducted late last year after the deadline for inclusion in the Nature paper, documented that extensive patches of reef had in fact died, and would not be likely to recover soon, if at all.

Professor Hughes led those surveys. He said that he and his students cried when he showed them maps of the damage, which he had calculated in part by flying low in small planes and helicopters.

His aerial surveys, combined with underwater measurements, found that 67 percent of the corals had died in a long stretch north of Port Douglas, and in patches, the mortality reached 83 percent.

By luck, a storm stirred the waters in the central and southern parts of the reef at a critical moment, cooling them, and mortality there was much lower - about 6 percent in a stretch off Townsville, and even lower in the southernmost part of the reef.

Reefs in this area

lost 47 to 83%

of their coral

Reefs in this area

lost 47 to 83%

of their coral

But an Australian government study released last week found that over all, last year brought "the highest sea surface temperatures across the Great Barrier Reef on record."

Only 9 percent of the reef has avoided bleaching since 1998, Professor Hughes said, and now, the less remote, more heavily visited stretch from Cairns south is in trouble again. Water temperatures there remain so high that another round of mass bleaching is underway, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority confirmed last week.

Professor Hughes said he hoped the die-off this time would not be as serious as last year's, but "back-to-back bleaching is unheard-of in Australia." The central and southern part of the reef had already been badly damaged by human activities like dredging and pollution.

The Australian government has tried to combat these local threats with its Reef 2050 plan, restricting port development, dredging and agricultural runoff, among other risks. But Professor Hughes's research found that, given the high temperatures, these national efforts to improve water quality were not enough.

"The reefs in muddy water were just as fried as those in pristine water," Professor Hughes said. "That's not good news in terms of what you can do locally to prevent bleaching - the answer to that is not very much at all. You have to address climate change directly."

With the election of Donald J. Trump as the American president, a recent global deal to tackle the problem, known as the Paris Agreement, seems to be in peril. Australia's conservative government also continues to support fossil fuel development, including what many scientists and conservationists see as the reef's most immediate threat - a proposed coal mine, expected to be among the world's largest, to be built inland from the reef by the Adani Group, a conglomerate based in India.

"The fact is, Australia is the largest coal exporter in the world, and the last thing we should be doing to our greatest national asset is making the situation worse," said Imogen Zethoven, campaign director for the Australian Marine Conservation Society.

Australia relies on the Great Barrier Reef for about 70,000 jobs and billions of dollars annually in tourism revenue, and it is not yet clear how that economy will be affected by the reef's deterioration. Even in hard-hit areas, large patches of the Great Barrier Reef survived, and guides will most likely take tourists there, avoiding the dead zones.

The global reef crisis does not necessarily mean extinction for coral species. The corals may save themselves, as many other creatures are attempting to do, by moving toward the poles as the Earth warms, establishing new reefs in cooler water.

But the changes humans are causing are so rapid, by geological standards, that it is not entirely clear that coral species will be able to keep up. And even if the corals do survive, that does not mean individual reefs will continue to thrive where they do now.

Coral reefs are sensitive systems, built by unusual animals. The corals themselves are tiny polyps that act like farmers, capturing colorful single-celled plants called algae that convert sunlight into food. The coral polyps form colonies and build a limestone scaffolding on which to live - a reef.

But when the water near a reef gets too hot, the algae begin producing toxins, and the corals expel them in self-defense, turning ghostly white. If water temperatures drop soon enough, the corals can grow new algae and survive, but if not, they may succumb to starvation or disease.

Even when the corals die, some reefs eventually recover. If water temperatures stay moderate, the damaged sections of the Great Barrier Reef may be covered with corals again in as few as 10 or 15 years.

But the temperature of the ocean is now high enough that global mass bleaching events seem to be growing more frequent. If they become routine, many of the world's hard-hit coral reefs may never be able to re-establish themselves.

Within a decade, certain kinds of branching and plate coral could be extinct, reef scientists say, along with a variety of small fish that rely on them for protection from predators.

"I don't think the Great Barrier Reef will ever again be as great as it used to be - at least not in our lifetimes," said C. Mark Eakin, a reef expert with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, in Silver Spring, Md.

Dr. Eakin was an author of the new paper and heads a program called Coral Reef Watch, producing predictive maps to warn when coral bleaching is imminent. Even though last year's El Niño has ended, water temperatures are high enough that his maps are showing continued hot water across millions of square miles of the ocean.

Kim M. Cobb, a climate scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology who was not involved in the writing of the new paper, described it and the more recent findings as accurate, and depressing. She said she saw extensive coral devastation last year off Kiritimati Island, part of the Republic of Kiribati several thousand miles from Australia and a place she visits regularly in her research.

With the international effort to fight climate change at risk of losing momentum, "ocean temperatures continue to march upward," Dr. Cobb said. "The idea that we're going to have 20 or 30 years before we reach the next bleaching and mortality event for the corals is basically a fantasy."

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Large Sections of Australia's Great Reef Are Now Dead, Scientists Find

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SYDNEY, Australia - The Great Barrier Reef in Australia has long been one of the world's most magnificent natural wonders, so enormous it can be seen from space, so beautiful it can move visitors to tears. But the reef, and the profusion of sea creatures living near it, are in profound trouble.

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This article talks about the potential of bringing extinct species back to life by intertwining their DNA with similar species. In theory this is a great idea but it also comes with a lot of costs. If you bring back one species you're therefore allowing a handful of other species to go extinct. About 20% of the species that currently exist are at risk of extinction and some believe we should be focusing on their conservation rather than bringing back species that have already gone extinct. The article also states that if a species were to be brought back to life it would require a large amount of money and the benefits of it would have to be much greater than the costs.

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But his team's findings do not fully resonate with all scientists. Some who are engaged in de-extinction efforts say that Dr. Bennett's analysis, and others like it, are too far removed from actual developments in the field.

One leading group in the field is Revive & Restore, a nonprofit initiative to rescue extinct and endangered species through genetic engineering and biotechnology. The San Francisco-based group is working to bring back the passenger pigeon, woolly mammoth and heath hen.

Conservation is central to Revive & Restore's mission, said Ben Novak, the organization's lead researcher and science consultant, and there could be ecological benefits to restoring lost species. In some cases, he said, living species are endangered partly because of "the lack of an ecological partner or some link in the food web."

"Any de-extinction effort must have long-term benefits that outweigh the costs," Mr. Novak said.

He added that it is not accurate to assume, as Dr. Bennett does, that funding for de-extinction and conservation is a zero-sum game, noting that all of the funding for Revive & Rescue's biotechnologies comes from private donors or institutional grants outside the realm of conservation efforts.

De-extinction may certainly have long-term gains, Dr. Bennett acknowledged, but he fears they are a luxury the world cannot currently afford. By some estimates, 20 percent of species on Earth now face extinction, and that may rise to 50 percent by the end of the century.

In their study, Dr. Bennett and his collaborators tried to approximate the costs of re-establishing and maintaining 16 species that went extinct in the last millennium, including the Lord Howe pigeon and Eastern rat-kangaroo from Australia, and the laughing owl and Waitomo frog from New Zealand. The researchers selected these animals because they could estimate what it would cost to conserve them based on proposed government expenditures to save similar living species that are endangered.

Based on the price of conserving the endangered Chatham Island warbler from New Zealand, for instance, they determined that managing a new population of the extinct Chatham bellbird would cost $360,000 in the first year.

Because the price of genetically reconstructing extinct species is still unknown (although it could cost tens of millions of dollars), the scientists focused on how much it would cost just to reintroduce and maintain these particular species in the wild once they had already been engineered.

In New Zealand, the researchers calculated, the funds required to conserve 11 extinct species would protect three times as many living species. In New South Wales, reviving five extinct species was similar to saving more than eight times as many living species.

The problem with this analysis, said Stewart Brand, co-founder of Revive & Restore, is that "these are all species that would never be considered seriously for de-extinction in the first place," either because their ecological roles can be approximated by another living species or because the benefits of restoring them are not great enough to warrant the costs.

He argued that Revive & Restore strictly assesses its de-extinction projects, through its own criteria and international guidelines, to ensure that they are worth doing and consistent with preserving existing biodiversity.

The passenger pigeon, for instance, was a keystone species that helped regenerate Eastern deciduous forests by landing on trees in giant flocks, breaking down their branches and excreting layers of rich fertilizer that allowed new trees to grow - a role that other birds likely cannot fill. On top of that, Mr. Brand said, the passenger pigeon has unique symbolic value as "one of the great stories of extinction."

But other scientists agree with Dr. Bennett that spending money on de-extinction is wasteful, even for a case like the passenger pigeon. Paul Ehrlich, president of the Center for Conservation Biology at Stanford University, and author of the controversial book "The Population Bomb," said that conservation is vastly underfunded and there is no guarantee that restoring extinct species will work.

To restore the passenger pigeon, Dr. Ehrlich said, you would need a large breeding population - with possibly more genetic diversity than can be gleaned from the 1,500 or so pigeons preserved in museum collections - and even then there may "not be enough habitat left for them anyway."

Dr. Bennett said "he wouldn't want to close the door on de-extinction forever." There may be some instances where it is worthwhile, he acknowledged, and pursuing it will advance research on genetic technologies.

"If someone wants to work on de-extinction because it's technically fascinating, that's fine," he said. "But if the person is couching de-extinction in terms of conservation, then she or he needs to have a very sober look at what one could do with those millions of dollars with living species - there's already plenty to do."

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We Might Soon Resurrect Extinct Species. Is It Worth the Cost?

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But his team's findings do not fully resonate with all scientists. Some who are engaged in de-extinction efforts say that Dr. Bennett's analysis, and others like it, are too far removed from actual developments in the field. One leading group in the field is Revive & Restore, a nonprofit initiative to rescue extinct and endangered species through genetic engineering and biotechnology.

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This article discusses the continuous issue of global warming in the United States and how people are reacting to it. It talks about how we as citizens are quick to act on short-term issues but tend to ignore long-term issues that aren't affecting us right now. The article specifically highlighted both Florida and Texas and explained how the citizens in these states have reacted to the situation. Although global warming is very apparent in Florida, only 57% of the citizens there are worried about it. The northern part of the state is not worried as much as the southern part. Global warming is also very apparent in Texas as well but again only 57% of the state is worried about it. Here, the citizens in the South and West are more worried than those in the North and East. The article also stated that global warming is brought up by about 33% of Americans and  31% don't mention it at all. Those from the East Coast don't talk about global warming as much as those from the West coast because citizens from the West coast have experienced more of the impacts of global warming, such as droughts and wildfires, than other parts of the U.S.

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Americans want to restrict carbon emissions from coal power plants. The White House and Congress may do the opposite.

In every congressional district, a majority of adults supports limiting carbon dioxide emissions from existing coal-fired power plants. But many Republicans in Congress (and some Democrats) agree with President Trump, who this week may move to kill an Obama administration plan that would have scaled back the nation's greenhouse gas emissions.

Nationally, about seven in 10 Americans support regulating carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants - and 75 percent support regulating CO2 as a pollutant more generally. But lawmakers are unlikely to change direction soon.

Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina, warned that committed activists - like the Tea Party - can shape politicians' approaches to issues like climate change. "Those are the ones who can take you out at the next primary," he said. Mr. Inglis lost his primary in 2010 to Trey Gowdy, a Tea Party candidate who attacked his climate views.

Most people think that climate change will harm Americans, but they don't think it will happen to them.

Most people know climate change is happening, and a majority agrees it is harming people in the United States. But most don't believe it will harm them.

Part of this is the problem of risk perception.

Global warming is precisely the kind of threat humans are awful at dealing with: a problem with enormous consequences over the long term, but little that is sharply visible on a personal level in the short term. Humans are hard-wired for quick fight-or-flight reactions in the face of an imminent threat, but not highly motivated to act against slow-moving and somewhat abstract problems, even if the challenges that they pose are ultimately dire.

Texas and Florida are vulnerable to climate change, but residents are split on how much to worry about it.

The effects of climate change, including sunny-day flooding, are being felt across Florida. But the state shows a distinct north-south split in the level of concern over global warming, and it is not a simple Democrat-versus-Republican distinction, said State Representative Kristin D. Jacobs, a Democrat. Four southeast Florida counties - Miami-Dade, Broward, and Monroe and Palm Beach - stand out because of their concerted effort to work on climate issues together and to discuss it in nonpartisan terms.

South and West Texas, as well as the state's Gulf Coast, are more worried about climate change than the rest of the state - and politics alone cannot explain it. South Texas favors Democrats, West Texas is decidedly more mixed, and the Gulf Coast in November 2016 was solid Trump territory.

One thing is shared by those disparate parts of the state: They have felt the brunt of shifting weather patterns, including rising temperatures, coastal hurricanes and western droughts so long and severe that some West Texas towns now recycle wastewater for drinking.

The state's highest concentrations of Latinos can be found in the south and west, which may also partly explain the difference in climate views. Roberto Suro, a professor of public policy and journalism at the University of Southern California, suggested age as a possible factor. Latinos are " a young population with the median age significantly younger than the white population, and younger still than the African-American population," he said, noting that young people have embraced climate science to a greater extent than their elders.

Everybody talks about the weather. But the climate? Only in some places.

Thirty three percent of Americans surveyed said they discuss global warming at least occasionally with friends and family - and 31 percent said they never do. But there are distinct regional patterns.

In the West, much of which has been affected by drought and wildfires, residents are more likely to talk about climate change. New England states, and not just the liberals of Massachusetts and Vermont, talk more about the climate, as well, along with coastal South Carolina, which lies in a path many hurricanes have taken.

But aside from Southeast Florida, which has put so much effort into making discussion of climate change a priority, much of the rest of the Atlantic Coast is less likely to engage in climate discussions, despite recent increases in tidal flooding.

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How Americans Think About Climate Change, in Six Maps

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Americans want to restrict carbon emissions from coal power plants. The White House and Congress may do the opposite. In every congressional district, a majority of adults supports limiting carbon dioxide emissions from existing coal-fired power plants.