Shire Horses

Shire horses are heading on the way out – or so a friend who is travelling the world and knows my interest in horses informed me via a link to the online Daily Telegraph. It’s true, shire horses are a dying breed - some will probably remain in tourist centres etc., and a few doing forestry work. It's the old men who keep them that are actually dying out (the average age of shire horsemen must be at least 70!). Why? Well for one thing they need lots of space (can't really keep one in the back garden), eat lots of food, have expensive vets’ bills and need to be worked regularly to keep fit, groomed to keep clean etc. - money and time. On the other hand, if there is no use or real demand for them, why not let them disappear since man made them in the first place?. We could always freeze a few then play God and clone them in the future to revive the breed. The Japanese have recently successfully cloned mice that have been dead and frozen for 20 years and produced healthy clones, so why not horses? Or any other are or dying breed or species for that matter? Ethics, what ethics?