‘De-extinction’ isn’t just misleading — it’s dangerous, ecologist says

Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

Dieter Hochuli: My broad issue philosophically is I think there the word is being misused. Extinction is forever. It’s irreversible. If there’s another term for recreating or resurrecting things. Yeah, I mean that’s, they’re probably a little bit, a little bit closer. But even then, I think it’s a dangerous precedent to claim we can fix some of these irreversible problems that we have contributed to.

Mike DiGirolamo (narration): Welcome to the Mongabay Newscast. I’m your co-host, Mike DiGirolamo. Bringing you weekly conversations with experts, authors, scientists and activists working on the front lines of conservation, shining a light on some of the most pressing issues facing our planet, and holding people in power to account. This podcast is edited on Gadigal Land. Today on the newscast I speak with Dieter Hochuli, a professor at the School of Life and Environmental Sciences and leader of the Integrative Ecology Group at the University of Sydney. Hochuli, and several of his colleagues wrote a piece in The Conversation detailing why the quote unquote de-extinction technology that the biotech startup Colossal Biosciences is working on promotes false hope and can’t undo extinction. The wolves that Colossal Biosciences unveiled to the world this past month are not dire wolves, as many scientists and geneticists have already pointed out, they are gray wolves with edits to 14 genes in their DNA. A small fraction of the tens of millions of differences between gray wolf, DNA, and dire wolf, DNA. Colossal argues that while these aren’t actually dire wolves, they look like them and serve their function. Hochuli tells me otherwise, and he says, calling them functionally a dire wolf or functionally de extinct is wrong. He explains that the concept of de-extinction isn’t just misleading, but dangerous, incentivizing governments and the public to not care about the conservation of existing species on the false premise that they can be resurrected. He also unpacks the impracticality of this technology and its approach pointing to the high failure rate of species, reintroductions and captive breeding programs for existing species, and all of the ecological barriers that make de-extinction a problem. Instead, Hochuli urges conservation of existing species and ecosystems pointing to the need to bolster funding for methods we already know work.

Mike: Hi Dieter. Thanks for joining us. Welcome to the Mongabay Newscast. It’s great to have you with us.

Dieter: Thanks for having me, Mike.

Mike: before we talk into the ecology and the ethics of this situation can we first establish, have dire wolves been quote unquote de extinct? Why or why not?

Dieter: One of the challenges is that we, a lot of us find the, the actual term de-extinction to be a mean, that a word that doesn’t really mean is what it says it really means. But if you’re asking, have dire wolves been recreated? I think even the creators of it, the people that have been manufactured this have highlighted some of the shortcomings of what they’ve got and the barriers that they face. They’re not, they’re not saying they’re exact replicas, they’re pointed out that it’s basically a recreation of something similar. At best. And I think they’ve been really honest at making that case there. I think the, the marketing of them as being de extinct is probably a little bit different. If you’re asking has an animal that used to walk on this planet that went extinct, been recreated, and is now walking back, I think there’s a school of thought that that’s not the case.

Mike: So then let’s examine why. What is the problem with the word de-extinction?

Dieter: The problem with the word de-extinction for many ecologists is that we see extinction as an event as being an irreversible event that has finality about it a bit like death. The idea that you can reverse those sorts of things is, is anathema I think biologically, but also philosophically and ethically. The idea that you can actually bring back something that’s lost with a, a copy of sorts, doesn’t sit well with many of us. So it’s, it’s probably asking us to accept losing all the great works of art, but keeping some of the great copies of them. So that’s probably where, where the term really sits poorly. We see extinction as being irreversible, and that once these, these entities are lost from the planet, they’re lost and gone forever.

Mike: And so ecologically speaking, why is it not possible to bring them back?

Dieter: It’s certainly possible to, to reintroduce any number of different things to try and bring back ecological function, if that’s what we’re trying to talk about because one of the things that we’re always interested in with ex extinctions is what the, the, the flow on consequences are when animals are introduced into systems. Or lost from systems, whether it’s pollinators or apex predators. So there’s a potential you can reintroduce the function from, from an Australian perspective, a few years back people were talking about the potential to reintroduce African megafauna to replace the, the megafauna that Australia lost many thousands of years ago: That big herbivores that used to be running around the, the giant wombats that were there. That’s probably not something that’s as popular as it used to be, but it was seen as a way of reintroducing an ecological function. From a conservation perspective, I guess the issue is basically this notion that the species are lost forever. The other challenge we face ecologically for things that may have been lost ten, 20,000 years ago, we really don’t know what their function necessarily was, what their densities were like. And we also know that the systems that those animals were running around when around in, have changed dramatically since they were lost through climate shifts and human occupation and human changes to landscapes. So, the idea of trying to recreate these, these historical systems is probably not something that even makes sense from a restoration perspective. Even when we look at restoring damaged systems things that we’ve damaged quite recently through mining, forestry, agriculture, we’re moving away from trying to recreate historical systems and trying to see what can we build back that’s sort of functional in the here and now.

Mike: And practically considering then like, because you know, they wanna bring back… Colossal’s ultimate goal seems to be to bring back the wooly mammoth, or at least what they are going to call a wool woolly mammoth. What are the ecological barriers in place that would make that an impossibility?

Dieter: I’m always wary of using the word impossible, but I think one of the, some of the barriers are for any of these species that are, they’re trying to be brought back. If the threatening processes that led to their extinctions are still here, that’s a really significant barrier to start with. Say if it was climate, if it was hunting, if it was predation by invasive species. There’s a whole lot of different reasons. That things are threatened at the moment. There’s a whole lot of reasons that things have gone extinct in the past. The first barrier is we have to make sure that the, the things that are being brought back, regardless of what they are, are being isolated from the threatening processes, the things that cause their declines in the first place. That’s the first ecological barrier. The second one is this notion that these systems that they’re being reintroduced into may have changed dramatically. From when they were lost the first time, particularly for the species that were lost many thousands of years ago. So the idea of reintroducing these animals back into systems that have changed dramatically means that the ecological processes that you might be assuming you are bringing back. It may not be relevant to those systems anymore. So with a mammoth, for instance, I’m, I’m certainly not an, an elephant experiment and I, I certainly see those animals and I marvel at them when I see them in museums, but I also reflect on them as being sort of a, a memorial to things that have been lost, lost through. In those cases, probably overhunting and landscape changes that, that happened when humans went moving through landscape. in terms of the ecological barriers, the barriers are really just the threatening processes and having a place to put them a, a sensible, meaningful place to put them. We struggle to maintain the persistence of things that are already living on the planet and are currently threatened. If those processes, if those threats are still there when you try and reintroduce them, then you’re probably not really doing anything but, but recreating them for reasons other than conservation reasons.

Mike: And so that species went extinct many thousands of years ago. But a, a species that went extinct much more recently, which is the thylacine, is another one they’re attempting to bring back. How would that shake out in your view?

Dieter: How would that shake out? Reintroducing the thylacine is, it’s one of those holy grails, one of, one of the, one of the other ones is actually seeing if they’re really still extinct. If you look at the nature of the landscapes that people looked at, they’re still commentaries about them persisting in isolated areas of Tasmania. I’m, I’m really skeptical that that’s the case. I think they are a species where we can really look back to the one that was lost in September in that zoo in in, in the 1930s in Hobart, and realize that that was probably the last one that was walking around on the planet.

Mike (Narration): The last thylacine was reported to have died at the old Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart, Tasmania, on the 7th of September, 1936. Two months after it was granted protected status. Since then, reports of sightings have surfaced, but nothing has been confirmed. It is considered extinct.

Dieter: In terms of the role it played, I mean, I don’t know, again, even understanding what the role is for thylacines. They were certainly eating a lot of other mammals in those sorts of areas. There were rumors of the meeting sheeps. They were sheep. They were certainly preying upon carrying in some cases too. Or eating bits and pieces. I know how thick on the ground they were in terms of their abundance. Were they playing that role where they regulating the system so they were causing these ecological cascades? This notion that when you lose a, a predator at the top of the food chain, you get these cascading effects. I mean, the simplest version is that you lose the predator. It releases their prey. Their prey becomes super abundant, and their, their impacts become greater. That’s something that’s really been documented quite widely with the wolves in the us for instance. These notions of reintroducing these big predators changes the dynamics of these systems. I don’t think we know enough about the Thala scene. To actually understand what the consequences of returning them might be. I doubt they’d be dramatic in terms of changing those ecosystems in Tasmania, one of the things that’s fascinating about it is that the, I mean, one of the things that not many people realize is a thylacine was distributed across the entire continent until about three or 4,000 years ago. There’s some great rock art in Kakadu that shows the thylacine, it was lost when dingoes were introduced around the three or 4,000 years ago. And one of the, one of the consequences there was the, the cascading effect of having what we now consider to be a native species, but which was then an introduced species probably excluded the thylacine from the mainland. They persisted in Tasmania. Their ecological role. I mean, I’d, I’d love to see one, I think if you’ve ever had the chance to go to the museum in Hobart and gone into their thine room where you can look at the pelts, look at the skeletons and realize just what a somber place it is. But I think one of the reasons, I think some of us, probably from a philosophical perspective. We need to think of the thylacine as extinct and gone is that it’s a stark reminder of an animal where we know what the drivers of extinction were. It was primarily human activity, landscape modification, and hunting on in Tasmania, and probably the introduction of dingoes onto the mainland. We know those threatening processes really well and if we can’t learn from that to try and conserve the stuff that we’ve already got, then I feel like we’ve got a real issue. And then, I mean, from an ecological perspective too, you mentioned the potential for reintroductions. I guess one of the things that we don’t speak about enough is how reintroductions are rarely successful.

Mike (note): A study from 2014 shows that animal reintroductions placing a species back in its original habitat after it has gone locally extinct, are successful less than 50% of the time.

Dieter: It’s one of those things about captive breeding programs that we probably don’t talk enough about. Captive breeding programs are very attractive, and this is getting away from the genetic manipulation and the recreation of new, of species that were lost. But the model for reintroducing them comes from those captive breeding programs. There’s a large body of work that shows that there’s real challenges in reintroducing. Animals into systems that they’ve been lost from and having them persist. The fate of many animals that are reintroduced to systems, whether it’s wildlife, carers rehabilitating animals, and reintroducing them, or captive breeding programs from zoo. They’re really high profile and what people see as quite sort of glossy adventures in, in, in action that don’t have really good outcomes with a the same one. Yeah. Look, I mean, it’s definitely, you know, it’s maybe not living memory, but the 1930s isn’t that far ago. We know the causes, the consequences of reintroducing them would require I think, obviously the right kinds of reserves to isolate them from their threatening processes. And it does then require an acceptance that you’d be having to be, you’d be reintroducing thine copies, and that probably sits badly with some people too, in terms of this belief that you can lose something and just build it or recreate it again when it requires us to accept a particularly. Some of us would say is a mediocre copy of it.

Mike (note): It should be emphasized here what Dieter is hitting on. These aren’t the actual animals themselves. Short of cloning an extinct animal, something that has only been successfully done once in history with the Pyrenean Ibex which died shortly after being born. We aren’t going to get an exact thylacine. It’ll be a copy of something else Dieter expressed to me after our call that he didn’t want a copy. He would want the real thing.

Dieter: And, and this isn’t to get away from the technical wizardry of the stuff that Colossal are doing. It’s extraordinary biologically. I think there’s some incredible outcomes from the work that are happening there. But from a conservation perspective and an ecological per perspective, I think there’s probably widespread skepticism. And that’s probably where I sit in that, in that skeptical world.

Mike: Right. I’m gonna get into the sort of the philosophical stuff in just a second. But I want to actually touch upon something you just mentioned, which is I think something that I haven’t seen talked about a lot. Now, you mentioned captive breeding programs, and this is something that we’ve reported on at Mongabay a lot, particularly when it comes to the Sumatran Rhino, which I’m sure some audience members will be familiar with was, you know, decades long. And this is a species that has not yet gone extinct has struggled massively to rebound. It’s really been a difficult journey for the Sumatran rhino. So, what I hear you saying is that instances like this don’t bode well necessarily for trying to create these, you know, almost hybrid creatures that aren’t actually the real species in the first place, but it’d be a difficult journey just to get them to a viable population, to reintroduction. Is that what you’re saying?

Dieter: Yeah, I think learning from the reintroduction biologists who are working with captively bred species, which are the actual species that are at risk, and seeing how unsuccessful many reintroductions are with respects to naive animals being preyed upon or not or being subjected to the threats that they were threatened with to start with. There are even complications. There are nuances. Captively bred animals don’t always behave the same way animals that are bred in the wild. So for some birds for instance, there’s a failure to repeat the songs that they’re, they’re taught in the egg, that’s the region herniated. So, I think there’s a real issue with respects to captive breeding. I think it’s a highly desirable thing to do. It’s one of the few things. You can do as a zoo, I suppose that’s a unique zoo action. I think many ecologists see parts of it as greenwashing because it’s one of these things where you can, the captive breeding program gets a great deal of attention. If you, you know, you, you’ll get the baby animals, which I absolutely adore. So you, you hear the story of a new panda, Sumatran rhino being born. It fills me with a little bit of hope. It fills me with hope and it’s such a joy to look at those animals. But the capacity to successfully reintroduce those animals into the world in which they’ve been threatened is really limited. And I think the fact that we focus very much on the captive breeding actions rather than the captive breeding outcomes, successful breeding in the wild for the things that were released. It doesn’t sit well with me as a genuine conservation action. I think it’s very easy to sell a captive breeding program. It’s very hard to do the long-term monitoring and show that these animals are reproducing back in the wild. And it’s quite heartbreaking for the people that are investing their heart and souls into the captive breeding to see that it’s often unsuccessful. I mean, I don’t wanna sound like a curmudgeon about captive breeding programs, and I understand the passion with which people go into wildlife rehabilitation or captive breeding, but I think the focus on captive breeding actions, rather than captive breeding outcomes is a lesson that the de-extinction proponents need to be mindful of because I think there’s a real lack of success of returning these animals to the wild. And that’s where I see the real conservation successes being. I think once these animals are reduced to being still on the planet, but only in captive bread situations, I feel like we’ve already lost a big part of the battle. Maybe not the war, but the battle feels quite lost. So that’s the logic there is basically the reintroduction from things that are still here on the planet, still have a habitat is really complicated. I think it’s really difficult to see a pathway that you can reintroduce these highly modified copies successfully. And that’s not to say that these sorts of interventions aren’t worth doing. There’s plenty of good examples of conservation interventions potentially adding to conservation outcomes, but this doesn’t, this one doesn’t sit well with me as being something that’s likely to deliver ecological outcomes or conservation outcomes.

Mike (note): Hi there. Thanks for tuning into the Mongabay Newscast. If you’re joining us for the first time, and even if you aren’t, I highly encourage you to subscribe to us on the podcast platform of your choice. If you value our work or nonprofit independent news on the environment, it’s one of the best ways that you can support us. But if you really like our work, you can show your support by donating to Mongabay at mongabay.com and clicking the button in the upper right corner of the screen. All for now back to the conversation with Dieter Hochuli.

Mike: That’s kind of the more I think we’ve just discussed the more hard science aspect of this for lack of a better term, let’s get into like the philosophical and ethical considerations if we could. What are the current ethical concerns surrounding this technology in your view?

Dieter: I think that the ethical concerns and the philosophical concerns for de-extinction are quite intertwined, and they actually relate a bit to the practical ones too. You know, getting beyond saying, it relies on us accepting a copy, no matter how good it is, a copy of what was lost as being a replacement’s one thing, but I think from an ethical perspective as a school of thought, that if we believe we can fix any problems that we create using some of these technological advances, it probably creates a disincentive to conserve what we’ve got now. I think one of the things that drives conservation, biologists and ecologist is that sense of loss and that concern about loss. And if you create a culture where people can go, actually, it doesn’t matter if we lose it, we’ll just build another one. You are creating a climate where you’re probably offering false hope and false promises. I don’t think we’d accept that with respects to humans. And cloning saying, oh, if these people die, we can just clone new copies of them and get ’em back.

Mike (note): Dieter and other experts like him have good reason to be concerned here. Not long after Colossal’s high profile media coverage of their gray wolf birth, the head of the Department of Interior in the United States federal government suggested removing protections for an endangered species and cited Colossal Biosciences work. Dieter tells me this is incredibly worrying from a conservation perspective.

Dieter: I don’t think we should be accepting that from a wildlife perspective either. I think there’s good reasons to, to, I don’t wanna say we need martyrs in conservation, but that’s essentially what these high-profile icons of conservation are. Those fears that we’re going to lose, I don’t know, a koala or a Sumatran rhino, you name it, any of these animals that are the high profile conservation icons, the fear of loss is one of the drivers for action and concern in the broader public, and it helps us maintain our connections to nature and it probably helps promote. Pro-environmental actions that are to the benefit, not only of the planet, but for people as well. Now philosophically, I don’t think we can use the word extinction and change the meaning to sort of losing something. Extinction is unequivocally the loss of that species. It’s gone from the planet, so it makes very little sense to use a word like extinction. And claim you can undo it. It’s like un-killing someone. It just makes very little sense. But I understand this. There’s also, there’s a whole lot of different perspectives on that with respect to the semantics around it. So I know that that’s probably, I mean, part of the conversation people talk about, functional de extinctions, which is, I don’t really understand it. I remember I read an article recently in the New Yorker about it, and it was from the colossal perspective, and I’ve heard people talk about functional extinctions and functional de-extinction, but I don’t actually think those terms make sense ecologically, I think if we move away from extinction is explicitly the loss, the irreversible loss of that species from the planet we’re moving into a world where we’re probably not using our terms appropriately. And without those clear definitions, our science really gets diminished. You know, from a philosophical perspective, I think we do look at our stewardship of the planet, and we do look at the things that we want to maintain and conserve. I think there’s a whole lot of good reasons to look, to look forward and say, how can we make the most. What we’ve got and reduce our impacts on the planet? I think if you look at the change in, in mindsets and beliefs in the last 20 or 30 years around the world, there is a growing recognition of trying to conserve things more effectively. There’s a much broader inclusion in terms of some of the places where the animals are being lost. So, you look at particularly parts of the tropics, you look at parts of the, the world, which haven’t traditionally been included in a lot of our conversation sciences, very much been embedded in, you know, north America, Europe, and, and little patches outside of the Global South. I think there’s much better inclusion now to try to maintain and conserve habitat in those areas. While maintaining the, you know, the development goals for those countries too, which I think are, are real too, if you’ve got many millions of people living in suboptimal places. You need to be mindful of that too. My broad issue philosophically is I think there the word is being misused.

Mike: Hmm.

Dieter: Extinctions forever. It’s irreversible. If there’s another term for recreating or resurrecting things. Yeah, I mean that’s, they’re probably a little bit, a little bit closer. But even then, I think it’s a really dangerous precedent to claim we can fix some of these irreversible problems that we have contributed to. So that’s part of the philosophical thing. And that, and look, that that isn’t an anti-tech approach, that’s just being concerned about the, what the meaning of the word is and why we can’t just start adapting that to suit. You know.

Mike: No, I mean, that’s a concern that’s been voiced by many people who work in conservation. Another concern that people have is the amount of money that is being poured into this, and I may have these numbers a little bit off, so I’m going to double check this, but I believe that Colossal has gotten hundreds of millions in funding. And the company itself is valued at several billion I believe.

Mike (note): Okay, I think I have the numbers. As of January this year, colossal Biosciences has $435 million USD in funding, and they are valued at $10.2 billion.

Mike: Yet conservation itself seems to be by comparison, underfunded. And so, conservationists say we should be you know, putting more money into, into that rather than into tech like this. What’s your view?

Dieter: I think ideally, I think there’s a really clear roadmap towards trying to conserve the things that we’ve currently got that are at risk. And so, finding a greater investment into that, which relates primarily to enhancing and conserving habitat and also reducing the threatening processes they face as a fairly clear path to that. I think that the argument that’s often made for advocates of these technological approaches is this is money that was never going to go to conservation anyway. This is from people who perhaps don’t buy into those conventional and traditional perspectives on that roadmap, but see a lot of excitement in the, in the innovation and the aspiration that comes from the technological fix. So I know that the argument that is often made is that money wasn’t going to conservation anyway, and there’ll be some spinoff benefits. As a consequence, once the work gets more advanced and the potential to look at conservation outcomes can kick in. So, when we speak about that overall investment, I think I’d be, I’m unlikely to be giving billionaires advice on how to spend their billions. I think they’ll probably form a lot of their opinions themselves, and I think it’s very attractive. I think one of the challenges I face is that this is this is kind of a bruised free approach to doing it, where regardless of what you do, you’ll either get the technol technological advance and that’ll be great. There’ll be small, incremental things, but there’s no really hard outcomes that we know are really hard to get. Those ones where you see them breeding in the wild again, where you have them you know, reproducing and carrying out their traditional role, there’s no goal that’s built in for that at the moment or there’s no explicit goal or pathway to that. So, look, I’m, you know, it’s, it’s very easy to, for me to say, I can’t believe you, you, you’re wasting your money on it or not wasting your money. But I think the issue I probably face is, I, I, obviously, I don’t mind whatever you want to spend their money on, but I feel like it’s greenwashing to claim that it’s having a conservation outcome. That’s probably where it sits really badly with me. I think, you know, people can spend their money doing whatever they like, and I can see the technological advantages and I think there are potential spinoffs from some of the sub-projects that Colossal have been promoting. But I think it’s wrong to claim that these are promoting conservation outcomes. And I think it’s important that scientists, particularly those with an understanding of how the natural world works and how these animals are operating in the wild. We’re operating in the world, maybe are going to be recreated. So I think, I think, yeah, you know, I, I, you know, naturally I’d say, you’ve got all those billions. Gee, you could do a lot of, you could probably do more for the planet more efficiently and better, but it wouldn’t be as, as glossy. It wouldn’t be, it wouldn’t be as, you know, exciting and aspirational and innovative. And if you’re an entrepreneur, that may be the sort of thing that attracts you more. Yeah.

Mike: So that’s a, that’s a really interesting, point that you’ve brought up. The argument that I see on social media on Bluesky is people go, conservation is not a zero-sum game. Why not do both at the same time? What would be your response to that argument?

Dieter: I think conservation in its traditional sense has become a zero-sum game. If you look at the way we’re told to prioritize certain species and certain parts of the planet over others, that’s a function of there being limited resources and intense competition for those resources. if you can manufacture more inputs more money into the system, that’s grand. But I think from a practical perspective, if we’ve been looking at triaging species for 20, 30 years now, there are certain species that get invested in. Others don’t get invested in this notion that some of them are so far gone, there’s no point in looking after them anymore, or there’s no interest in certain groups. So why focus on a group that the public hasn’t engaged with? So, conservation triage has been part of our lexicon for, oh gosh, 20, 30 years now. This notion that we’ve got to agree to lose some things. So, is it a zero-sum game? I think in the conventional world of conservation, where a lot of the work is done through, government, philanthropy and non-government organizations, there are very limited resources, they may not be zero sum, but we’re certainly talking about making hard decisions about where the investments go and where they don’t. The argument that’s made is that this is basically you can keep doing business as usual conservation, which people will not unsurprisingly make a case saying it’s not working very effectively. Some of our business-as-usual approaches and say, this is a brand-new approach. This is something that’s being done on top of everything else, so you shouldn’t be you know, it’s, it’s a, it’s a flawed argument to claim that it’s detracting from other arguments. The fact that Time Magazine can publish a cover with the word extinct, crossed out on it, means that it’s now gaining traction in the broader community as being perceived as a conservation outcome. And that’s problematic ’cause it means that we’re not doing a good job communicating the science that underpins it. I’m, I’m probably, I’m, I’m, I’m probably saying yes. There’s a zero-sum game of sorts given the competition for limited resources to practice conservation efforts. Yeah, I, I accept the argument that this is money that these investors weren’t going to put into conservation science anyway going private and having that approach, that entrepreneurial approach to doing it away from that sort of open science, transparent way of doing things is, is, I can see why that’s why you’d be investing in that way.

Mike: And, on the note, going back earlier to some of the some of what you mentioned about the, the spinoff efforts colossal claims, you know, on social media and on their website, that they’re doing work right now that is benefiting conservation. What in, you know, there’s a number of projects that we could talk about, but one of them, which I which I highlighted for you was the genetic modification of Northern Quolls. What are your thoughts about that? Is that, is that something that could help conservation?

Dieter: So your question about the spinoff efforts is really important because I think some of the spinoff efforts are focusing on extent species that are at risk, and that’s a really different approach, and it’s one where I think you can start saying, what are the kinds of, of technological advances that we’ve tried? What are the sorts of innovative, innovative approaches we’ve tried to address these animals at risk. We know that there’s a clear threatening process, and the northern quail is, is clearly at risk from feeding upon the introduced cane toad in Northern Australia. There’s, there’s a really fabulous body of work that shows that the inability to successfully eat these toads, these toads are everywhere. They’re toxic, they, the toads, course, quite a traumatic death for a range of animals. Freshwater crocodiles, large goannas up there, large, large barad lizards up there. And the argument that you can insert genes into the northern qual to help it deal with resistance towards the bufotoxin, the toxin that causes these problems is really exciting. One of the reasons it’s exciting is that I think there’s a reasonable body of evidence that shows that some of the, the technical approaches to dealing with conservation issues or pest issues are very effective. Now, the, the reality for the cane toads is that it’s very unlikely that you’ll be able to remove those animals from the environment. That’s something that’s really clear from the range of efforts that people have put into, into, into their management. They’re pervasive, they’re incredibly well adapted. To areas where there’s little bits of water, there’s some really interesting bodies of work going on to try and deal with it. But the idea, basically removing water access to toes to see if you can form barriers. But the reality is that the qual is threatened as a consequence of not being able to deal with the bufotoxin. So that potential to insert genes that help them manage that and then have, have basically. Super resistant quolls in this area. Now their numbers , have decreased massively across the top part of Australia as a consequence of the totes. I know one of my colleagues many years back was for this is for island populations, was teaching quals to eat to avoid basically. Tow toxins. They were feeding them towed sausages, essentially, this is, gosh, 10, 15 years ago. So they were actually training quolls that were being re-released to have a, through aversive training to, to avoid eating. So those sorts of interventions that, you know, have been shown to work in a range of different sorts of things. I mean, even in the forties and fifties, just to go back to, you know, some of these, you know. How, how technical stuff can help us solve issues. Sterile insect technique is something that was developed just after world War II where a whole bunch of irradiated insects get released into a population. They’re sterile and it means the populations of things like screw worm, I think a screw fly and medfly in, in the states of mosquitoes all went down significantly. So there’s, I I, I think there’s real, you know, that’s almost. 80 years of, oh, you can do this sort of thing at scale and actually get outcomes. I think it’s a really exciting opportunity. I don’t know much more about it other than I think there’s a really clear problem. There’s a clear cause of the problem. There is a range of different approaches molecular approaches or immunological approaches as well that could, potentially help, but basically this idea that you can try and manipulate the genes is exciting. Similarly, there’s some work that’s just been released, which has led to trying to create new types of toads that basically cha change basically creating these white toads that have an inability to metamorphose to grow from tadpole to toad. And so they spend their life as tadpoles. The tadpoles are eating the tote eggs as well, and there’s potential for these manipulated toads to be released and actually be potentially sort of a bio control of themselves. And the reason that they, they’ve changed the pigmentation is so you can identify in the wild. Now, one of the challenges we always find, I should also point out is that human mastery over nature’s got a pretty vexed record where we introduced species into new systems and then look back and go, ah, oh, we shouldn’t have done that. And the cane toads in Australia are a great example of that, where these animals were introduced to control the cane beetles up around Townsville and far northern Queensland on the far northeast of Australia. They’ve now marched over thousands of kilometers across the top end, so it’s probably the textbook case of a biological control gone wrong. I think we’re better now at trying to look at what are the consequences of introducingI don’t toads that eat toed eggs or quolls that are toad resistant. I don’t, I don’t see there being really significant ecological catastrophes happening through quolls being in much higher numbers in that part of the planet. So the technical opportunities are a part of the toolkit, and if we don’t explore them, given that those advance or those advances in, in, in what we might be able to do, then we’re really letting ourselves down. I think the ecological consequences are, are difficult to predict. The unforeseen ones from new introductions are still very present in our mind. And again, in the Australian context, people actively released foxes and cats just because they thought, oh, we, you know, it’s on rabbits ’cause it’s going to make the place nicer. That’s been a catastrophe environmentally. And then toads weren’t great either, but there’s plenty of good evidence of biocontrol done carefully being part of the toolkit to manage pests. And there’s a bit of evidence now coming that, you know, this is one of the things where, you know, if, if we can use these approaches to make more resistant animals like the toad resistant quolls, then I reckon, you know, if people are willing to support it, I don’t think it replaces some of the issues. Like even if you do, like for argument’s sake with the Northern Quolls, if you help ’em deal with they’re cane toad issue. That’s marvelous. But then the issues that we face up in the, that part of Australia in the top end, there are massive issues with respects to invasive weeds like gamber grass and, and buffalo grass. There are changes to fire regimes which have led to ca catastrophic declines of native mammals in those areas. you know, it’s one of those things. It’s, it’s kind of, we, we focus very much on species, species. Are still the currency for conservation that we use, particularly those iconic ones. But as, as ecologists, we also want to know a little bit about what the, the bigger picture is with respect to what the impacts of, of these animals might be. But. I think, yeah, I think it’s exciting to see the opportunities through, whether it’s creating a, a toad that can no longer become a full toad and it’s just a tadpole forever. Or whether it’s a quoll that can happily resist the bufotoxin. And, you know, if there’s no net consequences, then yeah.

Mike: I guess, you know, just to kind of bring this around and, and land this plane, do you, do you see that the sort of media attention , that has happened from this justifies the other conservation measures that they’re or the other conservation measures they’re doing justifies the media attention in the spin that’s happened?

Dieter: Look. I don’t think so. I think one of the challenges is that I find the de-extinction conversation about those lost species being resurrected to be less defensible ecologically, and it’s probably less literate scientifically than I’m comfortable with. I don’t think it makes a compelling argument scientifically or ecologically, and I worry that if you promote that argument in the wider community without the important caveats and concerns that have been raised, that there might be this widespread acceptance of, oh, we can fix this now. And I don’t think we can. And that’s probably what sits, you know, and again, I appreciate that the enterprise is enormous. As you’ve mentioned. The amount of money that’s going in the, the commercial implications of potentially developing these tools are significant too. But yeah, I don’t think it’s defensible scientifically or ecologically. And that’s probably where it sits badly with me. ’cause I feel like it doesn’t promote the outcomes that we desperately need. We know what the threatening processes are for a large number of animals and plants at risk, and we know what the pathways might be to help support them, but it’s hard. It’s unattractive work. It’s long-term work. It works outside of political cycle, and it doesn’t capture the headlines as much, and that’s one of the real challenges of trying to do the good conservation work.

Mike: Dieter Hochuli. Thank you very. Much for speaking with me today. I really appreciate it.

Dieter: Thanks for having me, Mike.

Mike: If you want to read more on this situation, find links in the show notes. As always, if you’re enjoying the Mongabay Newscast or any of our podcast content and you want to help us out, we encourage you to spread the word about the work we’re doing by telling a friend and leaving a review. Word of mouth is the best way to help expand our reach, but you can also support us by becoming a monthly sponsor via our Patreon page at patreon.com/Mongabay. Mongabay is a nonprofit news outlet, so when you pledge just a dollar per month, it makes a big difference, and it helps us offset production costs. So if you’re a fan of what we do here, go to patreon.com/mongabay to learn more and support the Mongabay Newscast. You can also read our news and inspiration from nature’s frontline at mongabay.com or follow us on social media. Find Mongabay on LinkedIn at Mongabay News, and on Instagram, Threads, Bluesky Mastodon, Facebook and TikTok, where our handle is @Mongabay or on YouTube @MongabayTV. Thanks, as always for listening.

​