On de-extinction for High Country News

A more critical take

A few years ago I wrote a not-unsympathetic post about Colossal Bioscience and “de-extinction”. At the time I was focused on the appeal of resurrecting extinct species, which I was inclined to view as an understandable impulse to atone for past ecological harm and the extension of a tradition of moon-shot rewilding agendas by idealists. I did not spend much time discussing the scientific, philosophical or legal implications of their agenda, thinking I would return to the topic another day.

Last month, Colossal was once again in the news, touting a resurrected dire wolf. Unlike earlier press boomlets, the company seemed eager to lean into its sleight-of-hand, and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum quickly weaponized their announcement as part of a broader anti-regulatory push from the Trump White House. Sensing there was a need to clarify why the company’s hype was dangerous and what gene editing might mean for the Endangered Species Act, I pitched Michelle Nijhuis (of High Country News and the excellent Substack Conservation Works) on a perspective piece discussing these issues. The article was published last week; you can read it by clicking the link below:

In a future where agencies can once again work to strengthen rather than weaken the Endangered Species Act, policies on hybrid and transgenic organisms should prioritize this fundamental generative force — not by the outright rejection of genetic modification as a conservation tool but by recognizing the central importance of unbroken chains of ancestry and kinship, produced over centuries and millennia by self-willed organisms.