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Speaker 1: You would have seen this in the news today. Massive

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Speaker 1: story today about this project to bring back the extinct moa,

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Speaker 1: and it's rustling a few feathers in the world of academia.

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Speaker 1: The Mammoth project aims to revive the prehistoric animal within

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Speaker 1: the next decade. I spoke to the company's CEO on

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Speaker 1: Herald Now this morning and what he told me was

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Speaker 1: that it's going to take ten years, but it will happen.

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Speaker 1: These things are massive, three and a half meters tall.

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Speaker 1: This is the South Island more three and a half

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Speaker 1: meters tall, and they do it. It's not going to

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Speaker 1: be exactly the moa. It's going to be a cousin

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Speaker 1: of the moa that they will edit to look more mourish.

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Speaker 1: Here he is.

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Speaker 2: Let's continue to build and build a stage gated process

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Speaker 2: in where they can be in secure, expanse at ecological

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Speaker 2: preserves and we can understand how they interact with the

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Speaker 2: ecology of the existing ecosystem and whatnot, and truly study

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Speaker 2: them and make them home here again.

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Speaker 1: Professor Phillips Siddon, University of Otago Zola Department with me

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Speaker 1: this afternoon. Good afternoon, Hi there, professor, do you like

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Speaker 1: this idea.

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Speaker 3: I think the devil's in the details. Ryan, I think

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Speaker 3: you've got to dig down. A lot of the word

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Speaker 3: is about bringing back Moa, but extinction really is forever.

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Speaker 3: We're not going to see Moya again, No.

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Speaker 1: Because it's not going to be a real ma is it.

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Speaker 3: It's not a real mara. So yeah, it'll be a

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Speaker 3: genetically modified organism some near relative. And the near relative

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Speaker 3: for moa are pretty distant. Actually, they're a small flight

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Speaker 3: at bird in South America.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, photos of them, the tiny yeah, tiny, sixty million

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Speaker 1: years difference. So is there anything wrong with doing it?

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Speaker 3: Well, you've got to ask why you're doing it, and

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Speaker 3: you've got to be honest about what you're doing. And

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Speaker 3: your quote you Ben was being upfront about talking about cousins,

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Speaker 3: but if you look at the front end media stuff,

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Speaker 3: it's all about bringing back moa. To all wrapping back

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Speaker 3: mon I was working on a kind of a tortured analogy.

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Speaker 3: If I could cheer it with you, I imagine imagine

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Speaker 3: if someone said would you like the Mona Lisa, and

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Speaker 3: you went, well, the Mona Lisa. The yeah, the Mona Lisa.

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Speaker 3: We're going to give you the mon Lisa, and they

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Speaker 3: give you this painting. You look at it and it's

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Speaker 3: a it's a woman with a smile, and you think, well,

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Speaker 3: it doesn't quite look like and you go, is this

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Speaker 3: really the Mona Lisa And they say, well, no, it's

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Speaker 3: actually another painting. I don't know, woman girl with the

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Speaker 3: pearl earring. But we've got some paint, bushes and paint.

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Speaker 3: We tweaked it and we made it look a bit

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Speaker 3: like the Mona Lisa. So because it looks like the

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Speaker 3: Mona Lisa, we're going to call it the Mona Lisa.

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Speaker 1: It's awful.

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Speaker 3: Thing's wrong with that. It's it's a it's a looker bike.

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Speaker 3: There's a couple of things wrong with that. It's not

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Speaker 3: the Mona Lisa. So there's an authenticity about it that's missing.

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Speaker 3: And the second thing is that you've messed up something

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Speaker 3: else in order to create that. You've got to say,

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Speaker 3: just because you can do these things, should you really

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Speaker 3: be doing it? What's the compelling reason for doing this?

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Speaker 1: So the cousin, we mark up the cousin by doing it.

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Speaker 4: That's what you're saying, Yeah, you're creating a genetically modified

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Speaker 4: other species that will have ideally mo like features or

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Speaker 4: look like a moa, whether it behaves like a moa,

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Speaker 4: and in the system, we don't know. Genetics will be different,

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Speaker 4: it's physiology be a different, it's behavior will be different.

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Speaker 4: So there's a lot of question marks about whether a

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Speaker 4: GMO version of a mora is actually going to be

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Speaker 4: useful at all.

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Speaker 3: We do use system.

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Speaker 1: We do it with plants, so don't wean food?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, well, we genetically modified plants or people to use

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Speaker 3: GMO plants in order to make them kind of grow

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Speaker 3: better or be resistant to disease and things like that.

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Speaker 3: And the rationale is that you want more crops that

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Speaker 3: feed more people.

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Speaker 1: Right, so there's a good reason for it. You're saying

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Speaker 1: there is no good reason here. They say tourism, and

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Speaker 1: you might get some more. You're just not buying. You

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Speaker 1: think this is us of bullshit, don't you?

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Speaker 3: Well I do, and I look at what coloss doing

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Speaker 3: and you know they're packing the icons of extinction. So

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Speaker 3: wooly mammoth, Dodo, Tasmanian tiger philacy. Now mo, why wouldn't

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Speaker 3: you go for moh? And which mow are you going

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Speaker 3: to go for? Because there are a number of species. Well,

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Speaker 3: they're going to the biggest one. So this is the

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Speaker 3: biggest media hit you can do. And if you look

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Speaker 3: at all the front end stuff, it's saying the MOA

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Speaker 3: is coming back, it's not. And there's some real questions

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Speaker 3: about why you're doing this. If you're rationalist tourism, that's

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Speaker 3: pretty weak source.

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Speaker 1: I think Professor Phillipson tell us what you really think.

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Speaker 1: It's a forgery, you wouldn't do. It's no Mona, Lisa

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Speaker 1: and basically a bunch of bs.

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Speaker 3: For more from Heather Duplessy Allen Drive, listen live to

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