Dire

Yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should. -- Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park

The articles heralding the return of the dire wolf are already being replaced by articles saying that they aren't really dire wolves, so that is interesting, but not really my issue.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technology/colossals-de-extincted-dire-wolf-isnt-a-dire-wolf-and-it-has-not-been-de-extincted-experts-say/ar-AA1CBYQB?ocid=BingNewsSerp 

The story did originally make me think of Jurassic Park, and not just as a matter of whether or not someday these cubs will kill someone. 

Yes, I thought about the could/should thing, but there was also something in the first article I read about how they might eventually be helpful with current endangered species. That was treated when Hammond found the scientists less than enthusiastic and said if it had been California condors they would have been fine with it.

No, hold on. This isn't some species that was obliterated by deforestation, or the building of a dam.

That particular conversation also mentioned them not knowing enough about the ecosystem. That part might be less of an issue with the dire wolves, who existed much more recently than dinosaurs. It should not be an issue at all for currently endangered species. However, the reasons for them being endangered are generally habitat loss. Poaching and over-hunting played factors, and toxins in the environment that concentrated as they went further up the food chain... those have played roles, but you cannot minimize the importance of habitat loss.

When we got to a situation where the last male white rhino died, that might be a situation where cloning could be beneficial. It being beneficial would still require the issues that led to the sever habitat loss being resolved.

Here's something not from Jurassic Park:

‘Nobody ever saw anything like this before. The first day, 25 September, I saw 10 river dolphin carcasses. That was a shock. Then two days later I saw 70 carcasses along the lake.’ One dolphin, swimming in circles, was in agony and struggling to survive. ‘We didn’t know what to do or how to help it,’ he told me. ‘If you try to rescue an animal that is already hurt, it can die from the extra stress.’

https://aeon.co/essays/we-can-still-get-out-of-the-climate-hellocene-and-into-the-clear 

That is about Amazon pink dolphins not doing well with the rise in river temperature. Let's say you clone them, where are you going to put them?

That requires a completely different kind of effort. Amazing scientific knowledge can be helpful, but not nearly as necessary as people actually becoming committed to the health of the planet and the value of species, sometimes at the cost of not maximizing profits.

I suspect they don't really care so much about restoring endangered species as they care about doing something cool; that was probably just something they said to sound better. 

What does this give us?

First of all, you have pack animals who don't really have a pack or parent animals to teach them how to behave. 

Apparently the process is really hard on the mother. I imagine that has to do with issues of size and anti-immune responses, and I don't like the thought of that. There may be animal research that has enough of a benefit to be justifiable, but we need to be really careful and ethical about how we treat living things. I can't imagine that those criteria can possibly be met here.

Introducing them into the wild sounds like something that can only go wrong, so what do you do with them?

There will certainly be people who would pay for the exotic pets, imagining themselves as Stark children I suppose. Bound to go badly.

I imagine there will also be people who would pay a lot to hunt them. Gross.

Theme park attraction? That just sounds revolting.

No, it's not the cinematic levels of mayhem that were imagined with an island full of dinosaurs -- I guess we can be grateful for that -- but it still feels wrong.