First up is the woolly mammoth, which has become the poster animal of the de-extinction movement thanks to the headline-grabbing work of Colossal Biosciences. Yet as Dr Ian Malcolm wisely observes in Jurassic Park, “Scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.”

So, should we?

A Solution To The Biodiversity Crisis?

With the current extinction rate thought to be at least an order of magnitude higher than the natural “background rate”, it’s clear that conservation needs all the help it can get. Protecting endangered species and preventing future extinctions is undoubtedly the priority, yet a lack of funding and the continued destruction of natural habitats have left us in the midst of an ever-escalating biodiversity crisis.

Many conservationists therefore see de-extinction as an unnecessary sideshow that distracts people from the real issue and may end up stealing both attention and resources from environmental protection projects. To prove the point, a recent analysis indicated that using public money to fund de-extinction efforts would result in a net biodiversity loss as roughly two extra species would become extinct for every one that could be brought back.

When people say, ‘how can we help you?’ we’re like, ‘give money to conservation’. We’re funded. We’re good.

Ben Lamm, Colossal CEO

On the other hand, if all the money that went into funding de-extinction came from private donors, the overall impact on biodiversity would be positive. However, if that same money was added to the conservation pot instead, the benefit would be far greater, and could potentially lead to eight times more species being saved.

Acknowledging these concerns, founder and CEO of Colossal – a venture capital-backed bioscience start-up famously attempting to de-extinct the mammoth, thylacine, and dodo – Ben Lamm tells IFLScience that “when people say, ‘how can we help you?’ we’re like, ‘give money to conservation’. We’re funded. We’re good.” So far, the company has raised hundreds of millions of dollars from private donors, including $10 million from Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson.

In contrast, many conservation projects struggle to stay afloat, which is why, according to Lamm, “sometimes we get this pushback where people say, ‘well, shouldn’t this money just go to conservation?’.”

“But I don’t think this money should go to conservation,” he says. “This money should go to building technologies so that we have a de-extinction toolkit that we can leverage if we end up needing it, versus not having a de-extinction toolkit.” In other words, we need to start spreading our bets by developing genetic rescue technologies as a safety net in case conservation doesn’t achieve its goals.

“Most of the money that goes into conservation goes to protect land,” says Lamm. “It doesn’t go into [solving problems like] how do we biobank tissue samples? How do we build a genetic backup? How do we sequence everything and build reference genomes? How do we actually create induced pluripotent stem cells, so that if we do lose a species, we could bring it back?”

“In the event that modern conservation doesn’t catch the trend line of what’s happening in this mass extinction event, it’s better to have these technologies than not,” he says. What’s more, by sharing these technologies for free with conservation partners, Colossal believes their efforts could massively increase our chances of saving existing endangered species.

For example, the company’s research has already led to the creation of a vaccine for elephant endotheliotropic herpesviruses, a disease that Lamm says “kills 20 percent of elephants – that’s more than poaching, more than human-elephant conflict, more than anything.” In this sense, the tech entrepreneur likens de-extinction to the Apollo program, in that it will undoubtedly create countless world-changing biotechnologies that are sure to be of enormous benefit to conservation.

“That’s not money that’s going away from conservation, that’s new money and new technologies that are flooding into conservation,” says Lamm. 

Despite all this, though, there’s still a case to be made for holding off on de-extinction – at least until we’ve made a bit more progress with traditional conservation. 

Colossal is hoping to resurrect the woolly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger, and the dodo – three species chosen because they were all wiped out by overhunting or habitat encroachment by humans. Yet with ecosystem degradation becoming ever more severe, there’s every risk that these animals will simply go extinct again unless we can learn to protect them from these same pressures. 

After all, there’s little to suggest that modern Tasmanian livestock farmers are any better prepared to cope with large carnivores threatening their flocks than they were in the 1930s, when they drove the Tasmanian tiger to extinction. The fear is therefore that de-extinction could become a very expensive waste of time if we don’t first get our house in order so that these resurrected animals have a shot at survival, which means placing conservation at the top of our priority list for the foreseeable future.

Ecosystem Services

The current biodiversity catastrophe is just one part of a planetary crisis colored by a series of dangerous tipping points, yet de-extinction may play a role in helping us step back from the brink on several fronts. 

Woolly mammoths, for instance, were once keystone species that helped cool the planet by compacting the Arctic permafrost and preventing the release of trapped methane and other greenhouse gasses. The great proboscideans also snapped trees, trampled shrubs, and fertilized the soil with their excrement, thus supporting the growth of biodiverse steppe grasses, which reflected sunlight and further delayed global warming. Since mammoths disappeared, however, the region has become covered in poorer grasslands and boreal forests, which support less life, absorb more of the Sun’s energy, and hasten the alarming temperature rise seen across the Arctic.

The habitats that [resurrected mammoths] are going into are not the habitats that existed during the Ice Age. So by putting them back in and trying to force these habitats back into their ancestral state, you’re essentially creating a new invasive species.

Dr Heather Browning

De-extinction is therefore touted as one possible tool in the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss, which is why some conservation organizations are keen on the idea – minus all the cloning and genetic engineering. A charity called Trees for Life, for instance, is currently leading a project to selectively breed cattle in order to create something resembling extinct aurochs, with the intention of releasing them in the Scottish Highlands.

As with Colossal’s mammoths, these auroch-like “tauros” are expected to help create habitats for other species to thrive. However, animal welfare expert Dr Heather Browning, from the University of Southampton, is among those who see this as unrealistic and problematic.

“The habitats that [resurrected mammoths or aurochs] are going into are not the habitats that existed during the Ice Age,” she tells IFLScience. “A lot of things have changed, and so by putting them back in and trying to force these habitats back into their ancestral state, you’re essentially creating a new invasive species.”

Re-introducing the mammoth to the steppe could therefore have “all kinds of downstream impacts on local wildlife, because you’re suddenly changing the structure of resources that are available so that some animals can’t find food, some animals no longer have shelter from their predators, and that sort of thing,” explains Browning.

It’s also unclear how Pleistocene animals would fare in an ecosystem that is considerably warmer than it was when they had their first shot at existence. And with a different cast of plants and animals to share their environment with this time around, it’s impossible to know just how the enormous beasts would upset the new balance. They could, for instance, become vectors for diseases that their new neighbors aren’t equipped to deal with.

Think Of The Mammoths

According to Browning, the biggest reason to oppose de-extinction is the potential for the animals themselves to suffer. After all, cloned animals have a history of developing severe health problems and living tragically short lives, although in the case of Colossal’s mammoths, the situation is particularly complicated.

That’s because we don’t have enough surviving mammoth DNA to clone one, nor do we have any mammoth mothers to gestate and birth the enormous creatures. Colossal’s workaround therefore involves the use of CRISPR gene-editing technology to modify Asian elephant DNA, before implanting the resulting embryos into female African elephants.

The company recently achieved a major breakthrough by altering the murine versions of certain genes associated with mammoth fuzziness, thus creating a bunch of painfully cute “woolly mice“. 

However, it’s unclear how elephant surrogates would give birth to baby mammoths – which are much larger than newborn elephants – or whether they will even accept these unfamiliar offspring as their own. In the event that the mammothlings are rejected by their mothers, Browning says the emotional and developmental ramifications for both the surrogates and the babies could be huge. 

In the case of extinct animals, the chances of us getting something wrong and failing to provide something they need seems very, very high.

Dr Heather Browning

“You’re talking about an animal that’s used to a multi-generational group to pass down knowledge about how to behave, how to act around one another, how to find and extract food,” she says. “But all of a sudden, your animal doesn’t have any of that. You’re essentially dealing with orphans.”

In such a scenario, Browning warns that “you risk very real psychological trauma as these [mammoths] would lack the security, stability and interactions that they need when they’re young in order to develop into healthy, independent animals.”

Raising the creatures in captivity is likely to pose further problems, since we’ve obviously never had the chance to study wild mammoths and learn about their ways. “My background is in zookeeping, where, in order to look after any animal, you have manuals that detail all the things that an animal needs – like its appropriate diet, social environment, and environmental conditions,” says Browning. “These things are gathered over many, many years of trial and error and a lot of research into the wild relatives of those animals. But in the case of extinct animals, we just don’t have any of those things, so the chances of us getting something wrong and failing to provide something they need seems very, very high.”

Sadly, there are plenty of examples of animals suffering in captivity due to a lack of knowledge about their requirements. Reindeer, for instance, used to be notoriously difficult to keep alive in zoos until research into wild herds revealed that they needed to eat lichen in order to survive. In the case of mammoths, however, there are no wild specimens to refer to when things go wrong.

“At the most extreme end, [the mammoths] could die, possibly slowly and painfully,” says Browning. “If we don’t get their nutritional balance right, it’s quite easy to end up with metabolic diseases or nutritional deficiencies. Even just feeding the young, it’s not clear that giving a mammoth elephant milk is going to be sufficient,” she adds.

Ultimately, Browning says she doesn’t have an issue with de-extinction per se, as long as it can be done in a way that doesn’t cause any suffering for the animals involved. She also has no objections to the development of genetic rescue technologies, which will undoubtedly bring huge benefits to the field of conservation and the protection of endangered species.

It’s worth remembering, however, that the end goal of de-extinction isn’t just to bring the odd animal back from the dead, but to potentially create healthy populations of extinct species and get them back out into the wild. Yet even when it comes to familiar, extant species, rewilding attempts are highly prone to failure, as climate change and human consumption continue to erode natural habitats across the world.

So while we may well need the types of biotechnologies that companies like Colossal are working on, there is an equal need for a healthier planet for all animals – including those brought back from extinction – to live on.