Giant, flightless bird is next target for de-extinction company Colossal Biosciences

The company stirred widespread excitement, as well as controversy, when it announced the birth of what it described as three dire wolf pups in April.

(CNN) — A species of huge, flightless bird that once inhabited New Zealand disappeared around 600 years ago, shortly after human settlers first arrived on the country’s two main islands. Now, a Texas-based biotech company says it has a plan to bring it back.

Genetic engineering startup Colossal Biosciences has added the South Island giant moa — a powerful, long-necked species that stood 10 feet (3 meters) tall and may have kicked in self-defense — to a fast-expanding list of animals it wants to resurrect by genetically modifying their closest living relatives.

The company stirred widespread excitement, as well as controversy, when it announced the birth of what it described as three dire wolf pups in April. Colossal scientists said they had resurrected the canine predator last seen 10,000 years ago by using ancient DNA, cloning and gene-editing technology to alter the genetic make-up of the gray wolf, in a process the company calls de-extinction. Similar efforts to bring back the woolly mammoth, the dodo and the thylacine, better known as the Tasmanian tiger, are also underway.

To restore the moa, Colossal Biosciences announced Tuesday it would collaborate with New Zealand’s Ngāi Tahu Research Centre, an institution based at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, that was founded to support the Ngāi Tahu, the main Māori tribe of the southern region of New Zealand.

The project would initially involve recovering and analyzing ancient DNA from nine moa species to understand how the giant moa (Dinornis robustus) differed from living and extinct relatives in order to decode its unique genetic makeup, according to a company statement.

“There is so much knowledge that will be unlocked and shared on the journey to bring back the iconic moa,” Ben Lamm, CEO and co-founder of Colossal Biosciences, said in the statement. For example, the company said, researching the genomes of all moa species would be “valuable for informing conservation efforts and understanding the role of climate change and human activity in biodiversity loss.”

Colossal, which has raised at least $435 million since it was founded by Lamm and Harvard University geneticist George Church in 2021, has committed “a large investment” to New Zealand, the company said without giving further details. Peter Jackson, the New Zealand-born “Lord of the Rings” director, who is one of a number of high-profile investors in the company, is also involved with the project. He has one of the largest private collections of moa bones, according to the Associated Press.

Scott MacDougall-Shackleton, cofounder and director of the Advanced Facility for Avian Research at Western University in London, Ontario, said that because the moa went extinct in the past few hundred years there were extensive bones, egg shell fragments, and even feathers that could be studied. He was not involved in the research.

“The primary explanation for their extinction is overhunting and habitat change following the arrival of Polynesian peoples to the island,” he explained via email.

“Prior to this they had very few predators,” he said. “This is a pattern for flightless birds on islands that have very little defence against hunting or predation (like dodos).”

The idea of reviving a species like this was “intellectually interesting, but really should be a low priority,” MacDougall-Shackleton said. “If we are concerned about island bird conservation there are hundreds of threatened and critically endangered species in New Zealand, Hawaii and other Pacific islands that need conservation resources more urgently.”

As part of the project, Colossal said it would undertake ecological restoration projects in New Zealand, focusing on rehabilitating potential moa habitats while supporting existing native species.

Many scientists argue that while Colossal’s researchers are advancing the field of genetic engineering, it’s not truly possible to resurrect an extinct animal — any attempt could only create a genetically modified, hybrid species. Suggesting that extinction can be reversed through technology risks undermining the urgency of conserving existing species and ecosystems, critics say.

Lamm, Colossal’s CEO, told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria last month that the biotechnology Colossal develops will be used to help rescue animals on the brink of extinction as well as those that have already disappeared. For example, he said, Colossal has produced two litters of cloned red wolves, the most critically endangered wolf species, using a new, less invasive approach to cloning developed during the dire wolf research.

“I think that we could have a scalable de-extinction system that isn’t going to replace conservation, but it is kind of that additional backup that I think we need, especially in these dire cases,” Lamm said.

Scott Edwards, a professor of organismic and evolutionary biology and curator of ornithology at the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University, said he was excited by the project although the techniques necessary to bring back the giant moa would be different to the dire wolf, because birds develop in an egg, making the process more challenging, he said.

“It’s important that science reaches for the stars and, you know, I do understand the ethical concerns with bringing (these birds back) especially if there’s no place for them,” Edwards, who was not involved in the project, said. ”But if it works it will impress upon humanity just how much we’ve lost.”

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