Endangerment have become a broad issue nowadays.

According to WWF, World Wildlife Foundation, 5689

animal species are endangered today while 800 have become extinct. In fact, the number of endangered
species would be increasing continuously and many species would soon face extinction. Scientists predict that
1540% of living species will become extinct by 2050 due to climate change, habitat loss and other
consequences of human activities. In fact, the reason why species become endangered is because they are
not well adapted to the environment.

In order to enhance the adaptation of species, scientist proposed three possible ways of genetic modification,
known as facilitated adaptation, which includes three options that might be able to save the endangered
species. The first option is to cross animals and plants with its same species but are better adapted, in order to
introduce adapted alleles into threatened populations. The second option is to transfer species with the
adapted genomes into threatened populations of the same species. The third option is to extract genes from
well-adapted species and insert the genes into different endangered species. All three options carry its own
benefits and risks.

From the environmental aspect, all three ways of facilitated adaptation are effective to enhance the adaptation
of species. For the first option, hybridizing individuals could help to recover the population of endangered
species. For example, the Florida panther is one of the most endangered species in the world. However, by
crossing it with a type of Puma which is well-adapted in Texas, the population of the Florida panther have
increased by 100%. The second way of facilitated adaptation is less risky as it only moves alleles within the
same species but would not carry any other diseases. The third transgenic approach could improve the
resistance of the species and enhance their adaption. For instance, tomato plants are not adapted to cold
environment. Yet, by inserting genes from rice, tomato plants would become more adapted to cold
temperature. Hence, all three approaches could help species to adapt better to the environment.

However, these three options may also bring risks in terms of environment. For the first approach, crossing the
same species may bring wildlife diseases and also disrupt genes, leading to the destruction of the populations
habitat. Although the second way of facilitated adaptation is less risky, it is hard to predict the interactions of
the genes and the environment. Hence, this could disrupt the well adapted combination of genes. The third
option may lead to serious consequences since it is even more difficult to predict the variants within different
species. Therefore, all of the three options carry their own risks.

Although facilitated adaptation may be risky, I believe that its advantages outrage its disadvantages. From the
examples above, it is shown that facilitated adaptation has helped endangered species. With facilitated
adaptation, endangered species could become more resistant to diseases, which helps them to adapt to the
environment. Then, more of these species could survive and reproduce. As a result, these species would be
more common and would not be endangered any longer. Therefore, facilitated adaptation is successful in
solving the problem of endangerment.

Even though facilitated adaptation could help the endangered species, the problem of endangerment still could
not be solved if we, humans beings keep destroying and polluting the natural environment, causing problems
such as climate change and habitat loss, leading to the endangerment of species. Prevention is better than
cure. Thus, instead of using genetic modification to solve the problem, we should raise awareness on
endangered species and take action to protect the natural environment to prevent endangerment happen.