‘De-extinction.’ Hearing such a phrase probably gives you flashbacks to Jeff Goldblum in a jeep getting chased by a roaring T-Rex. Since the release of Steven Spielberg’s dinosaur epic Jurassic Park (1993), the idea of resurrecting long-extinct species was commonly considered a reverie of science fiction. Now, with companies like Colossal Biosciences, who aim to bring wooly mammoths back to the arctic tundra, this fantasy may become a reality.
The modern approach to de-extinction efforts should not be equated to those of the fictional, eccentric billionaire John Hammond of the Jurassic Park franchise. Bringing back species that have gone extinct for a natural reason could have disastrous unintended consequences in the same way that the introduction of invasive species can destroy ecosystems. Unlike the triceratops, however, the primary reason we no longer see wooly mammoths grazing in Denali National Park, Alaska, is because our human ancestors hunted them to extinction. And now, as the global temperature rises, we are seeing that their absence could have environmentally disastrous consequences.
The arctic tundra of today does not look the same as it did thousands of years ago. What used to be expansive, robust, biodiverse grasslands -- an ‘African savannah of the North’ -- has turned into a biome uncertain of its own identity. Without large grazing herbivores to stomp down and fertilize the tundra, clumps of trees and shrubs that crowd out the natural grasses and weaken the soil litter the landscape.
The trend in rise of global temperature resulting from human greenhouse gas emission has caused alarming arctic permafrost melting in the past decades. The Arctic Permafrost, ground that remains frozen year-round, stores as much as 500 gigatons of carbon. This means that melting due to higher global temperatures could cause the release of 2.5 times as much carbon as is stored in all of the world's rainforests combined (Zimov, Science.org.) This would pose a huge risk to the world’s climate.
Large, grazing herbivores proliferate healthy grasses that stabilize the soil, reflect sunlight, and keep temperatures low. The absence of these creatures is thus a major contributor to the rising soil temperatures in the Arctic. From an environmental perspective, the resurrection of the wooly mammoth would not only be a win for the fight against waning biodiversity, but it would also be a potent tool to mitigate the effects of climate change.
It should be noted, though, that not all extinct species would benefit the global environment with their return. De-extinction efforts take an incredible amount of time and money -- Colossal has already raised 15 million dollars in funding for their project (Zimmer, NYTimes.com). From a practical, economic standpoint, these resources may not be best used on species revival efforts that could contribute little in ecological benefit. Moreover, the vast majority of species that have gone extinct have done so naturally. Bringing back a creature that nature deemed unfit for the world could lead to unintended, negative consequences on the greater ecosystem.The wooly mammoth occupies a pleasant niche where its extinction is almost solely due to humans and its environmental benefit could be massive. A tyrannosaurus rex, by comparison, would not meet both of these requirements.
Successfully resurrecting now-extinct museum-dwellers would be a scientific feat on par with the moon landing. Projects like these capture the imagination of humanity in a way that often more ‘cost-effective’ projects don’t. Oftentimes, environmental efforts need a charismatic face to spearhead their efforts; who knows where the WWF would be without the panda bear? However, as amazing of an accomplishment that it would be, anyone involved in these experiments needs to think ethically about these projects and treat them with reverence and respect. Interfering with the delicate balance of the natural world is always a risky endeavor, regardless of the payoffs.
Works Cited
Zimov, Sergey A. “Pleistocene Park: Return of the Mammoth's Ecosystem.” Science, May 6, 2005. https://www.science.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/science.1113442.
Zimmer, Carl. “A New Company with a Wild Mission: Bring Back the Woolly Mammoth.” The New York Times. The New York Times, September 13, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/13/science/colossal-woolly-mammoth-DNA.html.
Shapiro, Beth. “Pathways to De‐Extinction: How Close Can We Get to Resurrection of an Extinct Species?” Functional Ecology 31, no. 5 (2016): 996–1002. https://doi.org/10.1111/1365-2435.12705.