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WHAT IS ‘DE-EXTINCTION’ REALLY FOR?  
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Taylor Dotson
July 6, 2026
The MIT Press Reader
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_ Efforts to revive the Tasmanian tiger and woolly mammoth are
forcing conservationists to face a long-overdue debate over what kind
of natural world we want to build. _

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Tasmanian tigers, otherwise known as thylacines, have been extinct
since 1936. The species — which looks like a strange mix of a dog,
zebra, and a kangaroo — was hunted to extinction, largely because
European settlers blamed them for attacks on sheep, poultry, and other
livestock.

But before the thylacine was fully eradicated, 13 pups of the
marsupial species were preserved in alcohol. Scattered across museum
and university collections, they now sit in a milky liquid, their
beige skin wrinkled, every one of them looking its hundred years. Yet
this may not be the end of the thylacine. In fact, it may be a new
beginning.

Of the 13 preserved thylacine specimens, one joey has yielded enough
genetic material to map the animal’s genome. With that map in hand,
a team of scientists and entrepreneurs now hopes to bring something
like the thylacine back to life through a “Jurassic Park”-style
revival process known as “de-extinction.” The idea is that by
genetically engineering a functional equivalent of the thylacine,
scientists could potentially restore its lost ecological role and, in
turn, help repair damaged ecosystems.

Today, this effort is being spearheaded by University of Melbourne
geneticist Andrew Pask, who has teamed up with Colossal, the start-up
cofounded by billionaire entrepreneur Ben Lamm and Harvard geneticist
George Church. As it so happens, Church is simultaneously on a quest
to resurrect the woolly mammoth, for which he’s raised more than
$400 million.

However, there’s reason to believe the thylacine could come back
sooner: Marsupials are very attractive candidates for de-extinction.
For one thing, their offspring only spend weeks in the womb. The
brevity of pregnancy makes it easier to use a variety of animals, such
as the rat-like dunnart, as surrogate mothers for cloned Tasmanian
tigers. Moreover, it means that the replication process can be
iterated and, ideally, perfected relatively rapidly. For a mammoth, a
successful pregnancy in an elephant surrogate would drag on for almost
two years.

Practicalities aside, there’s also the question of “Should we?”
Even though the thylacine was ultimately eradicated by humans, they
had their own problems. Some scientists think the species was in
terminal decline long before human hunting and competition from dingos
pushed them out of mainland Australia. Low genetic diversity also left
them susceptible to disease. Even if thylacine embryos can
successfully gestate in a long-tailed dunnart and be reared to
adulthood, it isn’t clear if scientists can squeeze out enough
genetic diversity to produce a viable wild population.

_Perhaps what captivates us is a kind of redemption story._

Nevertheless, Pask and Lamm say they targeted the thylacine because it
was the only large marsupial predator; in fact, its role as an apex
predator was never replaced. They compare the return of the thylacine
to Tasmania with the reintroduction of wolves in Yellowstone,
imagining the new addition of a keystone species to the Australian
continent. Even if that goal proves impractical, techniques pioneered
with the thylacine could help other animals. Indeed, woolly mammoth
de-extinction efforts have already spun off discoveries that may help
protect captive Asian elephants from a deadly herpes virus. Thylacine
research, by the same token, might be a lifeline for koalas by
spurring the development of assistive reproductive technologies for
marsupials.

From another, more cynical perspective, though, these reasons seem
like post hoc rationalizations. There is little reason to believe that
a careful weighing of risk and benefit really drives interest in
Colossal’s de-extinction efforts. Its website justifies researching
the topic by referencing moral decency and the firm’s dedication to
a rewilded planet. Colossal frames de-extinction as a guilt-driven
drive to “[right] an anthropogenically induced wrong.” Perhaps,
then, what captivates us is a kind of redemption story — the
seductive idea that technology can not only repair nature but absolve
us for having degraded it.

The main criticism of de-extinction holds that it is a conservation
“sideshow.” The major drivers of extinction, in this view, are
climate change and habitat destruction, both of which harm food webs,
pollination, disease control, and climate resilience in the ecosystem.

De-extinction, in this line of thought, diverts vital resources from
these more important conservation efforts. As philosopher Ronald
Sandler puts it, although “it is terrible that there are no longer
enormous migrating flocks of passenger pigeons in the United States or
freshwater dolphin pods in China … what is even more terrible is
that this is no longer a world for them.” In short, bringing back
species misses the real problem.

This argument, however, is overly simplistic. Take, for instance,
Colossal and Stewart Brand’s Revive & Restore nonprofit, another
player in the same space. Both are funded by tech money and venture
capital. But while they might be attracting a lot of publicity, they
aren’t clearly leeching off or undermining existing conservation
efforts.

Moreover, critics underestimate the narrative power of resurrection
biology, especially among people who aren’t traditional
environmentalists. The endeavor speaks to those who seek a positive,
innovation-driven answer to the biodiversity challenge — people left
out by the less inspiring calls for limits and demands for expanding
protected areas.

Finally, the above criticism overlooks the possibility that
de-extinction might help build a large, positive constituency for
conservation. If and when we have viable thylacines or mammoths,
supporters will want to find or create places to put them.

This is all to say that the debate over de-extinction exposes a major
gap in conservation governance. On the one hand, the current mishmash
of private and public efforts — each with its own disparate goals
and visions of nature — does reasonably well to represent the
interests of a great many people. On the other hand, biodiversity is
far too important an issue to be steered at once by the chaotic whims
of Silicon Valley, the legal battles waged by environmental
nonprofits, and the old, sclerotic levers of government bureaucracy.
We need higher-level policymaking to set at least a few public
priorities for conservation and reconcile enduring conflicts.

_The endeavor speaks to those who seek a positive, innovation-driven
answer to the biodiversity challenge._

The U.S., and most other countries, have no established venue for
evaluating and steering efforts such as de-extinction — nothing
like, say, the Council on Bioethics under George Bush, but for
biodiversity. We _should_. For such a large and contentious issue,
some combination of experts, stakeholders, and ordinary people —
from agencies and tribes to nonprofits, researchers, and community
organizers — should be meeting regularly in heated deliberation. It
wouldn’t be within this body’s purview to answer the “Should
we?” question about radical conservation efforts; it couldn’t,
anyway. Nor would its purpose be to “kill” or prohibit certain
efforts.

Rather, the point would be to convert disagreements regarding
biodiversity into guidance for ongoing experimentation. The more
precautionary-minded would point out potential oversights or blind
spots. They would agitate for more safeguards and monitoring systems
for novel strategies, such as de-extinction. The more proactive, in
contrast, would try to steer government R&D toward promising but
uncertain conservation experiments.

The goal of such meetings would not be consensus. The quest for an
unequivocally “correct” answer for any biodiversity question is a
fool’s errand, even when attempted via deliberative democracy.
Instead, the mission would be to decide on _actions_ that most people
can live with, at least in the short term, or with certain
concessions. They’d discern ways to leverage dissent into more
intelligent policy. Outcomes would be partial victories to as many
different groups as possible, converting today’s chaotic, often
gridlocked, status quo into something more productive.

Like so many pie-in-the-sky start-up pitches, resurrected mammoths and
Tasmanian tigers may end up being more science fiction than reality.
But even if bringing them back seems overhyped, de-extinction inspires
the public to think about biodiversity conservation, which is probably
not top of mind for most people. We might draw a parallel to electric
cars. Elon Musk’s first Tesla vehicles were luxury, niche products,
but they also helped drag electrics into the public imagination.

Radical conservation efforts arguably do the most good as conversation
starters. They invite us to reconsider what matters to us about
nature. As technological developments enhance our ability to intervene
in ecosystems and to safeguard species’ future, we’re faced with
difficult questions: Is it really the “naturalness” of coral or
the nativity of species that matters to us? Might we better steward
the environment by sometimes jettisoning these ideas to reengineer
ecosystems for resilience? At the same time, can bioengineers be
trusted?

Ultimately, we can’t really answer these questions without
experience. Our own lives offer helpful analogies: For instance, all
the premarriage counseling in the world doesn’t fully prepare young
lovers for future arguments over how to load the dishwasher or the far
more serious disagreements that emerge when raising children, facing
financial hardships, or dealing with serious illness. Likewise, we
can’t know if radical biodiversity conservation is worthwhile
without getting into the thick of it. We may find that engineered
coral inspires as much awe and supports just as many fish as
“natural” ones. We might learn to love at least some
“out-of-place” species.

Biodiversity conservation, however, is traditionally biased toward an
abundance of caution. One article in “Conservation Science and
Practice” refers to this as the discipline’s “ethos of
restraint.”
[[link removed]] In light
of the large gaps in knowledge and the uncertainties about how to
contain radical conservation experiments, many scientists advocate
waiting. Political scientist Aaron Wildavsky described this
ultra-precautionary mindset
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as calling for “trial without error,” which essentially demands
that we have no trials at all.

But precaution comes with its own costs. As coral geneticist Line Bay
put it, “The worst thing that we could do is ignore the genetic
engineering because it’s frightening for some people, and then get
10 or 15 years down the road and realize it’s the only option.”
Inherited ideas about ecological risk can threaten species’
survival. For example, some scientists argue that hybridization
between barred tiger salamanders and an endangered California endemic
should be prevented. Although the offspring are usually more
resilient, they seem to have slightly different effects on the
ecosystem. Prioritizing the “genetic integrity” of California
salamanders, or the previous ecological baseline, risks leaving the
local landscape with no salamanders at all.

_Conservation is biased toward an abundance of caution. But precaution
comes with its own costs._

My point, of course, isn’t to call for blindly plunging forward.
Intelligent trials of de-extinction, assisted migration, assisted
evolution, and gene drives would keep risks to a minimum while
allowing us to learn more about their practicality and consequences.
Start small. Build up slowly. Monitor carefully. Transform criticism
into reasonable precautions. Protect against conflicts of interest.
Take steps to lessen the potential impact on the victims of error —
human and nonhuman. Such commonsensical strategies can turn a proposal
that initially seems like opening Pandora’s box into a mechanism for
improving the safety of radical conservation interventions.

Biodiversity impacts nearly all of us. Accordingly, conservation
decisions shouldn’t only be made by those who claim to speak for
“the best available science,” who can most effectively leverage
the Endangered Species Act to their side’s advantage, or who just so
happen to sit on millions of dollars in venture capital funding. As
with any issue in a democracy, almost everyone deserves some input
into how we try to achieve a wilder and more vibrant Anthropocene.

_TAYLOR DOTSON is an Associate Professor of Social Science at the New
Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology and the author of three
books, including “__The Divide_
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“__Technically Together_
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and “__Conservation by the People_
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from which this article is adapted._

_THE MIT PRESS is a mission-driven, not-for-profit scholarly
publisher. Your support helps make it possible for us to create open
publishing models and produce books of superior design quality.
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* de-extinction
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