Māori communities must be “central to the kōrero around whether or when we could or should pursue a project like huia de-extinction.” — Terri Te Tau, author of ‘The Valley of Unlikely Acquaintances’.

Due to the accelerating pace of AI development, Neanderthal de-extinction may become technically possible within years.

RIP George Gibbs. You will be sorely missed. You were a wonderful mentor. I'll forever remember taking your inspirational NZ Flora and Fauna summer paper (which led to the book Ghosts of Gondwana), teaching the paper with you, & many conversations about the evolution of our unique biodiversity.

RIP George Gibbs. You will be sorely missed. You were a wonderful mentor. I'll forever remember taking your inspirational NZ Flora and Fauna summer paper (which led to the book Ghosts of Gondwana), teaching the paper with you, & many conversations about the evolution of our unique biodiversity.

@itiscolossal.bsky.social & the IUCN have a shared goal of "Global Species-Survival Communications Campaign: The organizations will create a global campaign to strengthen informed public understanding of species conservation, restoration & biodiversity." 2/6

If @itiscolossal.bsky.social brand of science communication & aggressive tactics against critics is anything to go by, I wonder how much damage this campaign with the IUCN will actually do to conservation. 3/6

The genome engineering tools @itiscolossal.bsky.social is developing could be useful in the conservation toolbox, but they won't be a panacea or silver bullet. Conservation will come down to the grunt work of predator control, habitat restoration, translocations, & captive breeding programmes. 4/6

What @itiscolossal.bsky.social is not mentioning is that the ability to get new genetic variants into populations (like disease resistance or reintroducing lost genetic diversity) is much easier in large, relatively fast randomly breeding populations. 5/6

Most endangered species are the opposite - small, slow-breeding, & inbred populations where mating is non-random. This makes it very much harder to get these genetic variants fixed in these populations. If what @itiscolossal.bsky.social says sounds too good to be true, it probably isn't. 6/6