San Francisco's

[sschind]

If you put infernalis in tetrataenia, you have no tetrataenia anymore.
So personally I want to keep my animals as pure as possible.

I agree, why bother with the whole subspecies thing if intergrading them will become the acceptable practice. It doesn't matter to me if it is a rare subspecies or a common one. If there are going to be subspecific classification it needs to be kept pure.

I remember a few years back the fish and wildlife service was considering crossing the few (less than 10 I believe) dusky seaside sparrows (a Florida songbird) with the more common seaside sparrow. My thoughts were the same then. What is the point? you didn't save a species from extinction you polluted the whole lot.

[Stefan-A]

I remember a few years back the fish and wildlife service was considering crossing the few (less than 10 I believe) dusky seaside sparrows (a Florida songbird) with the more common seaside sparrow. My thoughts were the same then. What is the point? you didn't save a species from extinction you polluted the whole lot.

I think it's slightly different. Purity is less of a problem in the wild, as long as the outcome is an animal that can fill the same ecological niche. Saving a species shouldn't be an end in itself, it has to serve a purpose. I'm not saying that it could fill the same niche in this case, but with less than 10 individuals you'd be getting desperate and that solution seems more desperate than purely idiotic.
In captivity (and I don't mean conservation programs), keeping the lines pure serves no other purpose than satisfying the keepers.