Speaker 1: Kyotra. I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page,
Speaker 1: a daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. A
Speaker 1: new Jurassic World movie is right around the corner, taking
Speaker 1: us back to a world where dinosaurs have been brought
Speaker 1: back from the dead. But what has been a science
Speaker 1: fiction concept for decades now might be closer to reality.
Speaker 1: Colossal Biosciences claims it successfully de extincted the dire wolf,
Speaker 1: a species that has ceased to exist for around ten
Speaker 1: thousand years. The biotech company, which is backed by big
Speaker 1: name investors and celebrities alike, has a goal to bring
Speaker 1: back the likes of the wooly mammoth, the Tasmanian tiger,
Speaker 1: the Northern white rhino, and the dodo. But even if
Speaker 1: it is successful, is it right? Should we let nature
Speaker 1: take its course? And what would bringing back a specie
Speaker 1: that disappeared thousands of years ago do to our world
Speaker 1: as we know it today? Today on the front Page,
Speaker 1: University of Otago Department of Zoology Associate Professor Nick Rawleans
Speaker 1: is with us to discuss the ethical dilemma we now face.
Speaker 1: So Nick, first off, what is all of this de
Speaker 1: extinction chat and where did this concept come from?
Speaker 2: The extinction is the ability by scientists to bring animals
Speaker 2: back from the dead, back from extinction, and it was
Speaker 2: very much similar to like Jurassic Park. Originally people wanted
Speaker 2: to do de extinction using cloning, so very much like
Speaker 2: what happened with Dolly the Sheep. But to clone an
Speaker 2: animal you need really high quality DNA. The problem with
Speaker 2: a lot of extinct animals, the DNA is not high quality.
Speaker 2: It's fragmented, it's chemically modified, it's been degraded. So it's
Speaker 2: like if you took the Auckland Yellow Pages, which is
Speaker 2: two volumes and very thick, and putted in a wood
Speaker 2: fired pizza of an overnight, it comes out shards, crumbs, dust.
Speaker 2: So to the extinct animals, scientists are using genetic modification.
Speaker 2: They're using an enzyme called crisper, which acts like scissors
Speaker 2: where you can chop out pieces of DNA and insert
Speaker 2: new pieces of DNA. So with the die wolf, what
Speaker 2: they do is they sequence the genome of the extinct
Speaker 2: die wolf, compared it to a close relative, the gray wolf,
Speaker 2: and worked out where all the differences occurred, and then
Speaker 2: they chopped out the DNA out of the gray wolf
Speaker 2: and inserted the DNA of the die wolf to create
Speaker 2: a genetically modified hybrid. They argue, that's the thing called
Speaker 2: functional de extinction. Like the famous quote, if it walks
Speaker 2: like a duck, talks like a duck, and quacks like
Speaker 2: a duck, it's a.
Speaker 1: Duck, right. So that's why we're hearing about that company
Speaker 1: at Colossal bio Tho Sciences. They're behind these efforts to
Speaker 1: resurrect things like the wooly mammoth, the dough Dough, and
Speaker 1: most recently, like you said, the rebirth of the dire wolf,
Speaker 1: the ones we saw running around in Game of Thrones.
Speaker 1: But they're saying the world's first successfully de extincted animal,
Speaker 1: Is it really though?
Speaker 2: Short answer, no, The technology they have developed is stunning
Speaker 2: and will have very real world conservation benefits, but it's
Speaker 2: not de extinction. This is a genetically modified designer gray wolf.
Speaker 2: These die wolves are more close related to gray wolves
Speaker 2: than they are to the extinct die wolves. And if
Speaker 2: you think of all the individual DNA letters in a genome,
Speaker 2: which are millions and millions of them, they've only done
Speaker 2: twenty modifications to that genome. It's an infantistionally small amount
Speaker 2: of modifications. But if we think of functional de extinction,
Speaker 2: all they've got is something that looks like a die wolf.
Speaker 2: They have no idea yet where that behaves like a
Speaker 2: die wolf or if it talks like a die wolf,
Speaker 2: can it actually fill the role of a die wolf
Speaker 2: in the ecosystem, So it's not the extinction.
Speaker 3: Peter Jackson from Lord of the Rings was actually one
Speaker 3: of our investors. Where I was sitting in Peter's house
Speaker 3: with he and his partner friend, and I was like,
Speaker 3: you know, I showed him the video of them howling.
Speaker 3: He started tearing up. He goes, this is the first
Speaker 3: time I hear a darwolf or anyone's heard a darwolf
Speaker 3: in ten thousand year started well, he like he like
Speaker 3: physically emotionally got chills and started crying.
Speaker 1: So the company's chief animal officer said, the aim isn't
Speaker 1: for a zoo or amusement park Alah Island Nubla from
Speaker 1: Jurassic Park, but to reintroduce lost species back into the
Speaker 1: habitats they once occupied. But if I remember from my
Speaker 1: Jurassic Park studies correctly, didn't one of the plant dine
Speaker 1: I get sick from eating something that it shouldn't.
Speaker 2: Have, Yeah, it did. The triceratops got sick from eating
Speaker 2: a plant that hadn't been around when it lived teens
Speaker 2: of millions of years ago. And this is one of
Speaker 2: the things is if you're trying to say de extinct
Speaker 2: the die wolf, it went extinct thirteen thousand years ago.
Speaker 2: The ecosystem that it was part of no longer exists.
Speaker 2: If you try to extinct de mooa New Zealand's only
Speaker 2: got twenty five percent forest cover. At the time of
Speaker 2: human arrival, it was eighty percent forest cover. And we've
Speaker 2: lost entire ecosystems that have no analogue. So Central Otago,
Speaker 2: for example, used to be covered in lancewood and kofi,
Speaker 2: which is very weird to think of, but there's no
Speaker 2: analog of that anywhere. So you haven't got the ecosystems
Speaker 2: for these animals to go back into. A lot of
Speaker 2: the ecosystems are being highly highly modified. They're full of predators.
Speaker 2: But also if you are going to introduce animals into
Speaker 2: an ecosystem, you need them to be genetically healthy, not
Speaker 2: in bread like a royal family. I think Tutan Karma
Speaker 2: married his sister the Habsburgs out of Europe or even
Speaker 2: Queen Victoria married her cousin. For a population to be
Speaker 2: genetically healthy, you need at least five hundred individuals, which
Speaker 2: is a very tall order.
Speaker 1: Indeed, are there ethical concerns though, around the idea of
Speaker 1: just letting nature take its course. A lot of species
Speaker 1: were driven to extinction by humans, especially in New Zealand,
Speaker 1: and we'll touch on that in a moment. But what
Speaker 1: about those animals that just lost the fight against the
Speaker 1: test of time.
Speaker 2: I guess if the ecosystem was still around, there would
Speaker 2: be an argument for reintroducing these animals, and that and
Speaker 2: wouldn't be the defining argument, would be a argument. But
Speaker 2: if you're going to introduce these animals, you've got to
Speaker 2: think about will they be able to cope with the
Speaker 2: new world that they find themselves in. They're going to
Speaker 2: require a whole lot of conservation for them to survive
Speaker 2: in this new ecosystem. Who's going to pay for all
Speaker 2: that conservation, Who's going to pay for all that predator control?
Speaker 2: And in an age of stretch budgets, where is that
Speaker 2: money going to come from? So you've got this real
Speaker 2: danger of what you call opportunity costs. So if you're
Speaker 2: trying to conserve a de extincted moa, for example, then
Speaker 2: that's probably going to pull funding away from other endangered
Speaker 2: species that are worthy of conservation, like takahe or carcapo
Speaker 2: or the southern dottrial, and that could actually lead to
Speaker 2: their extinction unless you can convince Colossal to pay for
Speaker 2: the ongoing conservation of these de extinctive species and perpetuity,
Speaker 2: which I very much doubt. But you've also got issues
Speaker 2: of well, maybe this de extincted species is too successful
Speaker 2: in the new ecosystem and becomes a pest. So then
Speaker 2: how do you control this? Do you have to eradicate it,
Speaker 2: do you have to a hunt it? Do you have
Speaker 2: to keep it to low level? So you've got a
Speaker 2: whole lot of ethical considerations of just releasing back into
Speaker 2: the ecosystem.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but you're scientists. We're so preoccupied with whether or
Speaker 4: not they could they just dont.
Speaker 5: Thinkcause they should. Condos. Condos are on the verge of
Speaker 5: extinction virst. You could not know if I was to
Speaker 5: create a flock of condos on this island, you wouldn't
Speaker 5: have anything to.
Speaker 4: Say, Hold on, this is some species that was obliterated
Speaker 4: by deforestation or the building of a dam, dinosaurs had
Speaker 4: their shot, and nature selected them for extinction.
Speaker 6: Well, the question is, how can you know anything about
Speaker 6: an extinct ecosystem, and therefore, how could you ever assume
Speaker 6: that you can control it.
Speaker 3: You have plants in this building that are poisonous.
Speaker 4: You pick them because they look good, But these are
Speaker 4: aggressive living things that have no idea what centry they're in,
Speaker 4: and they'll defend themselves violently if necessary.
Speaker 5: Dinosaurs and man, two species separated by sixty five million
Speaker 5: years of evolution, have just been suddenly throwing back into
Speaker 5: the next together. How can we possibly have the slightest
Speaker 5: idea of what to expect.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we think about extinction in New Zealand. Like
Speaker 1: I said, mankind is to blame for pretty much all
Speaker 1: of it. Right, These ground dwelling, flightless birds who lived
Speaker 1: millions of years being able to hop about with no predators,
Speaker 1: that were doomed once man and the rats and the
Speaker 1: invasive species came in and stepped foot on this land. So,
Speaker 1: in a sense, do we have a responsibility to give
Speaker 1: them another chance?
Speaker 2: Wherever humans turn up in the world, extinctions always follow.
Speaker 2: It's inevitable. And we know the extinctions in New Zealand
Speaker 2: occurred at a time of stable climate. I think we
Speaker 2: have so many endangered species that are worthy of conservation
Speaker 2: that are crying out for conservation money that de extincting
Speaker 2: these animals is going to take money away from conserving them.
Speaker 2: So by bringing them back, you're probably dooming others to extinction.
Speaker 2: We should use the money to conserve what we've got left,
Speaker 2: but also use the technology that has been developed by
Speaker 2: companies like Colossal to conserve animals. So this enzyme that
Speaker 2: acts like scissors crisper that I was talking about, is
Speaker 2: you could use that to reintroduce lost genety variation back
Speaker 2: into cacopo or tarka hate so that they have the
Speaker 2: evolutionary potential to respond to ongoing climate change or diseases
Speaker 2: like in Cacopo you've got aspergillosis, lung fungus, or crusty bump.
Speaker 2: So we could use that technology to help what we've got,
Speaker 2: rather than in my view as saging human guilt for
Speaker 2: causing extinctions.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because I'm looking at this Colossal and I mean
Speaker 1: I'm seeing the headlines. They did a wooly mammoth mouse
Speaker 1: that had characteristics of a wooly mammoth they've brought back,
Speaker 1: well brought back in quotation marks the dire wolf. I mean,
Speaker 1: is there really any point in bringing back these animals
Speaker 1: rather than it's just like cool that we can.
Speaker 2: I don't think there's a point bringing them back. It's like, yes,
Speaker 2: there are some arguments that these animals may have key
Speaker 2: roles to play in the ecosystem, like the New Zealand
Speaker 2: forests haven't realized the mile has gone extinct. There are
Speaker 2: certain pollination and seed dispersal mechanism and plants that relied
Speaker 2: on birds that are no longer here. And if you
Speaker 2: think of mammos, they trample Siberian created the mammos step
Speaker 2: which helps sequesta carbon. Those are arguments to bring them back.
Speaker 2: But on the flip side, how many hundreds of means
Speaker 2: of dollars are going to have to spin to bring
Speaker 2: back enough mammos to trample Siberia. It won't be five
Speaker 2: hundred mamos, It's probably going to be thousands of mammos.
Speaker 2: I think the money's better spent elsewhere. But trying to
Speaker 2: get celebrities or philanthropists people with money to invest in conservation.
Speaker 2: Sometimes conservation can be sexy, like tarka hae or carcapot.
Speaker 2: But often the non sexy species are the ones that
Speaker 2: are just as highly endangered, and trying to get money
Speaker 2: is a lot easier if people are investing in something
Speaker 2: akin to Jurassic.
Speaker 1: Park and something cute and cuddly like a direwolf. What
Speaker 1: is an unsexy species you think deserves a bit of
Speaker 1: the spotlight.
Speaker 2: In New Zealand, shags, the Targo shag, Fovo shag, endangered
Speaker 2: shags have been persecuted for decades. If we think of
Speaker 2: the spotted shag and hierarchy golf, it's genetically unique. It
Speaker 2: used to be spread throughout hierarchy golf, that the harbors
Speaker 2: all around Auckland, wy Cato and up into Northland, and
Speaker 2: now it's on two or three islands in hierarchy golf
Speaker 2: and highly endangered. And yet most people, unless you're a
Speaker 2: person who likes birds, don't tend to like shags.
Speaker 1: If we were to start having a conversation about reintroducing,
Speaker 1: say the Whuyah, is it important to consult with Ewei.
Speaker 2: Most definitely so. Mari are the indigenous people of New Zealand,
Speaker 2: and under Article two of Tatarity, the Treaty of Whitangy
Speaker 2: and the Mari version. Mari have rights over New Zealand
Speaker 2: floor and fauna. And this is also the basis of
Speaker 2: the Y two six two claim, so the White Tangy
Speaker 2: two six to two claim which says that Mari have
Speaker 2: intellectual property rights over New Zealand flaor and fauna. But
Speaker 2: we need to engage with Mari any we partners, were
Speaker 2: all all on this journey together, and all the engagement
Speaker 2: that our lab has done up and down the motor
Speaker 2: up and down the country. Is Mari a dead set
Speaker 2: against the extinction for a lot of the reasons that
Speaker 2: I've talked about, but also for others because there are
Speaker 2: real fears for biopiracy or bioprospecting or these companies overseas.
Speaker 2: Company is going to trademark these de extinct creatures. And
Speaker 2: so if colossals say the extinct to the moa, who
Speaker 2: owns the moa? Is it colossal who sunk hundreds of
Speaker 2: means of dollars into it? Is it the people of
Speaker 2: New Zealand? Is it the ewe who's bones the moa
Speaker 2: came from that got de extinct? And who's going to
Speaker 2: pay for ongoing conservation.
Speaker 6: Imagine a Jenga tower that's made out of millions of
Speaker 6: blocks that are constantly moving and responding to each other,
Speaker 6: and if you take it a big one, there will
Speaker 6: not be time for the blocks to react to each other,
Speaker 6: and the ecosystem make allapse. And so you want to
Speaker 6: slot one real quick. And in that case, what you
Speaker 6: could do is that you wouldn't have to grab the
Speaker 6: existing animal that went extinct. You could create an animal
Speaker 6: that serves that same niche that is close enough to
Speaker 6: that blob that you can pop it in there and
Speaker 6: then the ecosystem will recover. And that's why they're making
Speaker 6: the case that these wolves are a de extinction, because
Speaker 6: theoretically they might be dire wolf shaped enough that they
Speaker 6: would slot into the dire wolf shaped hall left behind
Speaker 6: by the actual dire wolves that went extinct.
Speaker 1: I guess, how can we make sure that this kind
Speaker 1: of gene editing stays in the conservation realm and it
Speaker 1: doesn't evolve into, you know, billionaires buying their kids half
Speaker 1: dire wolf half Siberian tiger pups for their birthday.
Speaker 2: I think there needs to be international laws and guidelines,
Speaker 2: which becomes quite hard in New Zealand. We've had for
Speaker 2: many years the ban on genetic mortification, which the current
Speaker 2: government has said they will consider lifting, and we need
Speaker 2: a conversation as a country about how we move forward,
Speaker 2: how target to fenua, how Mari are involved with that,
Speaker 2: because they're currently being shut out of that based on
Speaker 2: the draft bill that's been released. But we need to
Speaker 2: have these conversations. So New Zealand it will be very
Speaker 2: easy to regulate how this is done and so you
Speaker 2: can control how it's used, specially for conservation or for
Speaker 2: pest eradication for example. The problem with the extinction is
Speaker 2: in the eighteen hundreds, museums around the world wanted a
Speaker 2: lot of stuff that was in New Zealand museum collection,
Speaker 2: so there was a lot of trade. Is say a
Speaker 2: museum here, well, we want a Siberian tiger, or we
Speaker 2: want an elephant, or we want a Falkland's wolf, we
Speaker 2: will trade you for moa bones or other extinct New
Speaker 2: Zealand animals, and so museums all around the world there
Speaker 2: are the remains of New Zealand's extinct birds and there
Speaker 2: is nothing to stop coloss or any the Extinction company
Speaker 2: from going to these overseas museums, getting the mole bones
Speaker 2: and doing the extinction.
Speaker 1: Is this all just a hop, skip and a jump
Speaker 1: away from bringing back all kinds of species? Like have
Speaker 1: we not learned anything from Jurassic Park? Like how realistic
Speaker 1: is it that Jurassic Park? I mean, if we're having
Speaker 1: this conversation now, what about in two hundred years scholars
Speaker 1: are listening to this podcast episode and thinking, God, I
Speaker 1: wish we did something then, because this Tyrannosaurus Rex is
Speaker 1: just ruining downtown Auckland.
Speaker 2: I would like to think in two hundred years we
Speaker 2: will have learned the lessons of Jurassic Park. So we
Speaker 2: can't bring dinosaurs back to life, let them run and
Speaker 2: mark and eat lawyers like in the movie. Ancient DNA
Speaker 2: only lasts about one million to two million years under
Speaker 2: ideal permafrost conditions like in the Siberian permafrost, So we
Speaker 2: can't get back to dinosaurs. But I think there might
Speaker 2: be things in two hundred years of what Colossal and
Speaker 2: other company might say is a de extinct creature. But
Speaker 2: whether you would call it success, I'm not so convinced
Speaker 2: by because there's still there's still a lot of hurdles.
Speaker 2: So for example, colossal wants to bring back the thylacine
Speaker 2: or the Tasmanian tiger. Its closest relative is a small
Speaker 2: little mussupial called the dun up, and there are teens
Speaker 2: of means of years different from each other. You can't
Speaker 2: put a thylacine fertilized egg to be brought up to
Speaker 2: term in a dunn up. The dunn up would explode,
Speaker 2: So you have to develop artificial wounds. So there's a
Speaker 2: whole lot of technological leaps and bounds that need to occur.
Speaker 2: But the proof and the potting will be if these
Speaker 2: animals do get de extincted and they get released back
Speaker 2: into the wild and there are no unintended consequences, whether
Speaker 2: they actually fill the role what used to be here
Speaker 2: that are not.
Speaker 1: Convinced of Thanks for joining us, Nick, No worries, pleasure.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of The Front Page. You
Speaker 1: can read more about today's story, Worries and extensive news
Speaker 1: coverage at enzedherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page
Speaker 1: is produced by Ethan Sills and Richard Martin, who is
Speaker 1: also a sound engineer. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to the
Speaker 1: Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker 1: and tune in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.