The Last of Their Kind
April 24, 2025 at 04:30PMColossal Biosciences recently made headlines with a bold claim: the resurrection of the dire wolf. So, what animal is next? This ambitious genetics startup, focused on de-extinction, has also set its sights on the northern white rhino. Only two of these rhinos are left in the world—Najin and Fatu, a mother and daughter living out their days in Kenya’s Ol Pejeta Conservancy—and they’ve already endured so much. For Nautilus, Elena Kazamia delves into the big question skeptics are asking: Is genetically engineering a northern white rhino “more of an exercise in technological hubris than genuine conservation”?
“I think a lot of the people involved are coming from a good place,” van Dooren told me. “But they’re also coming from a place of intellectual curiosity and trying to do cool things with science and technology. And too much of what’s going on in the de-extinction space is being driven by investment and financial imperatives. That creates a murkiness around motivations that prevents us from asking important questions about whether we ought to be doing this or whether we ought to be pursuing the very real conservation problems on the ground for all rhinos and poaching. Because there is a real conservation struggle today. And it’s not taking place in labs.”
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/04/24/najin-fatu-rhino-deextinction-colossal/
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