95bFM ‘Extinction is forever’ — Is de-extinction possible and how ethical is it?
April 19, 2025
Interview by Max Micheel, adapted by Yesenia Pineda
The University of Otago’s Nic Rawlence raises concerns about the practice of ‘de-extinction,’ following American company, Colossal Bioscience, allegedly bringing back the dire wolf. Image: Canis dirus fossil in the Utah Museum of Natural History - Wikimedia Commons.
American company, Colossal Bioscience, has claimed to have brought back the dire wolf, which went extinct roughly 13,000 years ago.
Colossal Bioscience used genetic engineering and preserved DNA from a fossilised skull; genetically modifying the DNA into three snow-white pups known as Romulus, Remus, and Khaleesi.
However, the creation of these pups using gene-editing technology and the supposed revival of the dire wolf have raised concerns by many about the ethics of ‘de-extinction,’ or whether this species can be classified as a dire wolf.
Director of the Otago Paleo Genetics Labs at the University of Otago, Nic Rawlence, told 95bFM’s The Wire that what has been created is instead a “designer grey wolf” that exhibits traits of what the dire wolf could have.
“The dire wolf has not been brought back from extinction. To de-extinct someone or something we need to bring back an exact copy. So traditionally that would be through cloning.”
“The DNA from the dire wolf fossil was too badly preserved to do [the] cloning and wasn’t in big enough chunks; what Colossal has done was sequence the genome of the dire wolf to its closest living relative, the grey wolf.”
Rawlence raises concerns about the lack of ‘dire wolves’ that have been brought back.
“Three of them; what [Colossal Bioscience has] claimed to have brought back, is not a population. In conservation, you need more than 500 individuals.
Without a genetically diverse wolf population, he says this will result in inbreeding.
“It's this golden rule to have a genetically healthy population. You want the population to have the genetic variation of Auckland, not of the English royal family or the Hapsburgs.”
Rawlence also says climate change and changes in Earth’s geography are further considerations needing to be made regarding ‘de-extinction’.
“[If] you wanted to bring back [the] moa in central Otago [for example], the central Otago landscape at the time of human arrival was dominated by Kōwhai and Lancewood. There is no analogue of that forest or ecosystem left anywhere in New Zealand.”
In addition, for ‘de-extinction’ to be ethical, Rawlence says indigenous considerations need to be taken into account, especially when the question becomes “Who owns the extinct animal?”
“In New Zealand [for example], Māori have intellectual property over Aotearoa's flora and fauna. They are the kaitiaki of living and extinct species because they can trace their whakapapa, their ancestry, back to all living things; So living extinct things [are] their tūpuna.”
“[Māori would] need to be involved because conversations need to happen around Indigenous intellectual property, Indigenous data sovereignty, bioprospecting, biopiracy. What would happen if the moa were brought back and the de-extinction company trademarked the moa?”
Rawlence believes caring for existing species is a better approach than ‘de-extinction’.
“Extinction is forever. We can't use the traditional cloning techniques. All we'd be doing is genetically engineered animals.”
“I think develop the technology by all means. Use it to save species that are endangered, but don't bring back extinct ones.”
