Nature Conservation, Dire Wolves, Moratoria, and Technophobia

“In considering the risks of recombinant DNA, we shy at kittens and cuddle tigers.”

Thus James Watson, co-discoverer with Francis Crick of the structure of DNA in 1953 —thanks to data developed by Rosalind Franklin—distilled the import of an earlier (now almost ancient) episode of alarms over what could go wrong once humans start messing with nature. The Washington Post documents why Watson’s trenchant observation remains relevant today, reporting that “The International Union for Conservation of Nature [IUCN], a top conservation group, is weighing a moratorium on unleashing genetically modified plants or animals into the wild” because “the consequences of any misstep, they say, may be uncontainable and irreversible.”

The marquee trigger for these concerns is, ostensibly, worries about dire wolves, or rather their genetic relatives. But this isn’t really about dire wolves or anything adjacent. It’s mostly about misplaced technophobia. Does anything in the past half century suggest these fears are well grounded, and that the proposed moratorium would do more good than harm? In a word, no.

IUCN is an important and highly regarded group with a sad task: cataloguing the world’s threatened biodiversity. There is a vast literature on biodiversity and the causes of its loss: at the top of every list is the loss of wild lands, primarily by conversion to agriculture, but also to other forms of development. This is followed by overfishing, wildlife poaching, invasive species, and climate change. Should IUCN risk its prestige to a proposed moratorium on introducing genetically modified plants or animals? The case is dubious.

Genetically engineered plants have now been grown for decades on hundreds of millions of acres by millions upon millions of farmers. The result has been considerable reductions in pesticide usage, topsoil erosion, CO₂ emissions, and biodiverse habitat lost from wildlands to agriculture, and despite billions upon billions of meals consumed by humans and livestock not a single confirmed case of so much as a sniffle. Thanks to the increased yields they deliver, reducing the need to convert wild lands to agriculture, genetically engineered plants, it is clear, have been a major benefactor of biodiversity. If similar calls for a moratorium on the ‘deliberate release’ of genetically engineered plants had been heeded in the late 20^th century, all those gains, worth billions upon billions to farmers, consumers, and the environment would have been lost with no remotely counterbalancing benefits.

But let us focus on genetically modified animals, whether they’re part of Colossal’s de-extinction push or other efforts aimed at restoration of threatened populations, alleviating health threats, improved food production, addressing climate change, and so forth.

The number of different genetically engineered animals in play is not large: those most widely known include the previously mentioned dire wolves (and not so far along, thylacines and woolly mammoths), black-footed ferrets, and mosquitoes. With respect to dire wolves, mammoths, thylacines, and other similarly charismatic Pleistocene denizens, even if the scientists working to de-extinct them succeed (and despite being some of the best in the world, they face considerable technical challenges) the question remains: where would they put them? I would welcome dire wolves in my neighborhood (we have a superabundance of white-tailed deer, for which the main control measure seems to be inefficient and expensive predation by automobile) but I am probably an outlier. But their habitats are gone—they went extinct for a reason. And though efforts are underway to restore some of those habitats, these also face monumental challenges that are not assured of success. It is hard to imagine a future world in which any significant number of these large mammals would be free roaming over the landscape except in rare and unusual locations and circumstances, and none that would tip scales on a global basis.

It is fair, though, to wonder if the money spent on such de-extinction efforts might not generate greater returns if invested in more classical conservation efforts, like habitat conservation or improving agricultural production. But inasmuch as most de-extinction R&D is being pursued with private funds, this may be more a question for venture capitalists to consider than government regulators or biodiversity managers.

The black-footed ferret presents a very different case. This is not a matter of de-extinction but of “genetic rescue.” Mustela nigripes was thought to be extinct not once, but twice, with its most recent re-discovery in 1981 in rural Wyoming. The rediscovered population, however, consisted of only seven reproductive individuals, in a population with a striking lack of genetic diversity. But using tissue preserved from a ferret that had lived in the 1980s, researchers collaborating among multiple institutions such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Revive & Restore, ViaGen Pets & Equine, Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, recently cloned two individuals and reintroduced them into the breeding program with good results. The total population now numbers “over 300 individuals in the wild”. Combined with efforts to introduce disease resistance this may well lead to a lengthier story for this ancient species.

None of these animals have the potential for multiplication and dispersal high enough to justify a blanket moratorium on work towards their re-introduction. Indeed, researchers working with them wish they could have such a problem. Mosquitoes, however, present a more interesting case.

Some may be surprised to learn that the world champion killer of humans is not something large and toothy, not a lion, tiger, or even a hippo, but the tiny mosquito, which is responsible for 700,000 human deaths every year. Mosquitoes kill us through the diseases they spread including malaria, Zika, dengue, chikungunya, and yellow fever. Prophylactic measures like insecticide impregnated bed netting are effective, but must be used correctly, and have led to several unanticipated negative consequences.

Oxitec is a biotech company based in Oxford, UK. It aims to develop biological control measures aimed at disease vectors like mosquitoes and ticks. It has developed several different ‘gene drives’ they hope will spread genetic debility sufficient to decrease wild populations of disease vectors like Aedes aegypti (vector of dengue, Zika, chikungunya, and yellow fever), Aedes albopictus (dengue, chikungunya, zika), Anopheles albimanus (malaria) and Anopheles stephensi (malaria). The company has had successful field trials in Brazil and the Caribbean, and launched its first field trial in Florida in 2021.

Opponents of biological innovation have strenuously fought Oxitec’s field trials, despite exhaustive risk assessments by the EPA. These opponents overlook the fact that these mosquitoes are not a keystone species anywhere, and it is by no means clear anybody would lament their absence, indeed quite the contrary. And the arithmetic is pretty simple – opposition based in reason and data would have to conjure a negative impact from developing these and similar biological control measures that would deserve to be considered in the context of the present annual toll of 700,000 deaths. That’s a tall order. Surely there are more important ways IUCN can leverage its clout on behalf of global biodiversity than to indulge such ill-considered and blunt instruments as a moratorium that would stifle valuable innovative technology when it is most needed. Revive & Restore’s Ryan Phelan nailed it when she said “It’s appalling to think that we’re going to just stymie scientists from advancing and using the new tools of biotechnology.” IUCN should take heed.