Brad Shaffer in The New York Times — Opinion: Humans Have a Long History of Making ‘Very Bad Decisions’ to Save Animals

An ambitious project of more than 100 scientists led by the biologist Brad Shaffer at UCLA is currently working to catalog the genomes of about 230 animal and plant species across California. The goal is to create a map of the state’s genetic diversity and identify hot spots: areas of high diversity that should be prioritized for protection, or of low diversity that might need a boost from assisted breeding programs.  Up to now, these infiltrations have occurred by chance or accident. But, in the future, Shaffer thinks they could be part of an intentional design.