Fictional films such as Jurassic Park have shown us what bringing back extinct species could look like. Not fazed by the fictional horrors, a group of scientists including Harvard geneticist, George Church, aim to bring the Woolly Mammoth back to life. 

Church’s company, Colossal, claims resurrecting the Woolly Mammoth – or, more specifically, creating a cold-resistant elephant that looks and behaves like the Woolly Mammoth – is possible, with a 99.6% genetic match in Asian elephants, Mammoth DNA and modern genetic engineering in the form of CRISPR technology. The company has also received $15 Million in funding, helping to make what might have once sounded like an insane dream a reality, and is intending to produce the first calves in four to six years. 

Why?

Tech entrepreneur and Colossal co-founder Ben Lamm told CNBC that the “[Our] goal is in the successful de-extinction of inter-breedable herds of mammoths that we can leverage in the rewilding of the Arctic. And then we want to leverage those technologies for what we’re calling thoughtful, disruptive conservation.” The company insists that resurrecting the mammoth would have lots of benefits, such as helping to combat climate change. According to Colossal’s scientists, mammoths could help restore the Arctic Tundra and revive the Mammoth Steppe, once the world’s largest ecosystem and home to millions of species. Currently 1,600 Billion metric tons of carbon are stored in the arctic’s permafrost, ground that mammoths were supposed to have protected by grazing the grasslands and roaming the area. Furthermore, resurrecting the mammoth is posited as a method to save the modern Asian elephants from extinction.  

Criticism 

If the Woolly Mammoth is the solution to stop global warming, bringing it back would be more than justified. However, critics have voiced their doubts about the whole endeavour. First and foremost, claims of using African elephants as surrogates have been called unethical, and bringing back a species that has been extinct for more than 10,000 years is sure to raise some eyebrows. 

Scientists such as Love Dalén, a professor of evolutionary genetics at the Centre for Palaeogenetics in Stockholm who works on mammoth evolution, claims there is no evidence that herds of the Woolly Mammoth roaming the Arctic Tundra would have any impact on climate change. Others argue that, while the mammoth went extinct 10,0000 -14,000 years ago, the effects of climate change have only been present since the industrial revolution, which happened around 250 years ago. Therefore, the issues of climate change do not lie within changing landscapes, but mostly in man-made advances that lead to an industrialised, urbanised capitalist society that can only be solved by reducing carbon emissions. 

Do we need the Woolly Mammoth to combat climate change?

While any effects that the Woolly Mammoth would have on our climate are quite impossible to predict, most scientists agree that there is scientific value in the plan to bring back the extinct animal, especially concerning endangered species; as genetically modifying the Asian elephant will eliminate both of the main challenges that are threatening the species today: a herpes virus, and its close proximity to humans as new habitats would become available to the cold-resistant elephants. 

So, while bringing back the Woolly Mammoth might not be the worst idea, it is highly unlikely that the mammoth really is the climate hero we need. While the advances in technology and genetics are very promising, perhaps using these to genetically alter endangered species to stop them from going extinct makes more sense than trying to recreate an animal that has been extinct for centuries as doing so raises a lot of ethical questions and the consequences – whether good or bad – are not yet foreseeable.

By Teresa Ehrlich