Reversing Extinction
March 31, 2026 at 05:30PMIn this piece for Aeon, historian Sadiah Qureshi discusses de-extinction technologies, from cloning the last Pyrenean ibex to gene-editing gray wolves to resemble dire wolves. The de-extinction industry, Qureshi writes, is quietly yet profoundly reshaping what it means for a species to be alive, extinct, or somewhere in between. In recent years, there’s been a growing movement of people who suggest that a species is not truly lost if their genetic material remains—they are simply “evolutionarily torpid,” frozen in a lab somewhere and stuck in a liminal state. Qureshi explores how this thinking “transforms extinction from a permanent loss into a temporary inconvenience we can choose to address later,” diverting attention and funding away from protecting species that are still alive. Instead, Qureshi argues, we need to rethink how we treat life on Earth now.
Most Americans might assume the peregrine they watch soaring across the 21st-century sky is the same falcon that their great-grandparents saw. While the birds may look the same, on a genetic level, it is not the original bird, but a hybrid. Whether you call its replacement a de-extinction – or merely a conservation success through smart breeding – a way of being that had existed for millennia was lost. Does engineering a replacement obscure that absence, and our role in it?
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2026/03/31/deextinction-conservation-cryopreservation/
via IFTTT
Watch