The Trump administration is trumpeting a biotech company’s claim of reviving a long-lost wolf as an argument for slashing endangered species protections.
Dallas-based Colossal Biosciences said Monday that it used gene editing to create “de-extinct animals” in the form of three pups with the light-colored fur and musculature of a dire wolf.
Many scientists expressed skepticism that the pups could be classified as part of a canine species that went extinct over 10,000 years ago. But Interior Secretary Doug Burgum said the achievement demonstrates that it is not government regulations but innovation that will save species.
[Scientists genetically engineer wolves to carry traits of extinct dire wolf]
“It’s time to fundamentally change how we think about species conservation,” Burgum wrote in a post on X. “Going forward, we must celebrate removals from the endangered list - not additions.”
He has already met with the company about using its animals in federal conservation efforts, as well as for potential species restoration.
“If we’re going to be in anguish about losing a species, now we have an opportunity to bring them back,” he told Interior Department employees during a live-streamed town hall Wednesday. “Pick your favorite species and call up Colossal.”
Even before the dire wolf announcement, the administration had begun moving to upend the protections regime that has been in place for five decades, since the passage of the Endangered Species Act in 1973.
On Monday, the Fish and Wildlife Service - which falls under Burgum - sent a proposal to the White House to redefine what it means to “harm” a species under the act. Although no details have been released publicly, environmentalists expressed concern that a rule change would allow for greater habitat destruction.
“If that’s what they intend to do, it’ll just fundamentally undermine the Endangered Species Act,” said Noah Greenwald of the nonprofit Center for Biological Diversity.
Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress are preparing sweeping cuts to protections for bears, bats, lizards and still-living wolves. They say unnecessary and overbearing rules hamper economic development and infringe on the rights of states and private landowners.
The Endangered Species Act is a “very well-meaning bill that had great objectives,” said Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Arkansas), chair of the House Natural Resources Committee.
But he added: “It’s been a bit of a failure.”
The revival of the ‘God Squad’
In less than three months in office, President Donald Trump’s team has shown few qualms about overriding endangered species protections that threaten to block his energy agenda or other policy goals.
On Inauguration Day, Trump signed a memorandum declaring that he was “putting people over fish.” The president directed water away from a Northern California river system, which supports a tiny protected fish called the delta smelt, to parts of the state facing wildfires - even though a lack of water was not the reason for the historic fires in Los Angeles.
In February, the Interior Department rescinded guidance from under President Joe Biden that the oil and gas industry should slow ships in the Gulf of Mexico to avoid striking a species called the Rice’s whale. With fewer than 100 remaining, the Rice’s whale is one of the most endangered marine mammals left in the ocean.
Burgum also issued an order asking deputies to consider economic factors when deciding habitat protections.
During his confirmation hearing, Burgum lamented the “weaponization of federal rules meant to actually protect wildlife.”
“It’s used for groups that are just trying to block our nation’s progress,” he told Congress.
Perhaps Trump’s most sweeping action so far involves restarting a long-dormant committee that can override protections for endangered species. Environmentalists give it an ominous nickname: “the God Squad.”
The committee, which consists of Burgum and five other high-level officials, can approve projects even if they result in the extinction of a species. The panel, officially called the Endangered Species Committee, has rarely been convened.
The panel “has long been called the God Squad because it has the power of God over the fate of species,” said Andrew Wetzler, senior vice president for nature at the Natural Resources Defense Council.
With control of both the House and Senate, Republicans in Congress hope to go further by cementing changes to the Endangered Species Act in law.
Several Republicans are pushing bills to delist a menagerie of animals. These include the dunes sagebrush lizard, which lives in Texas oil country, and the northern long-eared bat, which lives in forests that the timber industry wants to log, as well as populations of gray wolves and grizzly bears, which ranchers say prey on livestock.
Westerman, the congressman, notes that of the hundreds of protected species, only 3 percent have ever recovered.
“It’s almost like some people think Moses wrote the Endangered Species Act on stone tablets, and we can’t touch it,” he said. “But we’ve got to be honest about the results we’re getting.”
With that record, Westerman is pushing to amend the act to give more power to states and limit courts’ ability to review decisions to remove protections for plants and animals.
The moral hazard of ‘de-extinction’ work
Ahead of the dire wolf announcement, Burgum met with Colossal’s leaders in March to discuss the concept of “de-extinction” and the use of the technology in conservation, according to company CEO Ben Lamm.
The company has big aims to bring back versions of the dodo, the mammoth and a carnivorous marsupial called the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger. Colossal says it is not trying to create replicas of extinct animals, but functional equivalents that can fill the ecological niches of vanished species.
In addition to modifying 14 genes to produce the trio of gray wolf pups meant to resemble the ancient dire wolf, the company recently also cloned four red wolves, a critically endangered canine.
Fewer than 20 still live in eastern North Carolina, while approximately 240 more are kept at captive breeding facilities. Colossal discussed with Burgum the possibility of using the company’s cloned red wolves in recovery efforts.
“It’s really important to have a seat at the table regardless of your political views,” Lamm said in an interview with The Washington Post.
Even though many conservationists distrust Trump, Lamm added, “Is it really the right thing just to put your head in the sand and ignore the rest of the world?”
The company emphasizes how its gene-editing technology can help conserve existing species. For instance, Colossal wants to fix mutations in endangered pink pigeons, which suffer from inbreeding, as well as make a vaccine for a herpes virus that kills elephants.
The technology, company leaders said, should not be misconstrued as a substitute for protecting existing species.
“What we’re doing gives us the ability to help accelerate recovery, but recovery still is dependent on the conservation of wild habitats,” said Matt James, Colossal’s chief animal officer, who added that the Endangered Species Act is “a monumental piece of legislation.”
In a statement to The Post, Interior spokeswoman J. Elizabeth Peace said Burgum “values collaboration and dialogue with a range of partners.”
“We remain committed to exploring all science-based options that can help strengthen the recovery of the red wolf and other endangered species,” she added.
Among skeptics of “de-extinction,” there has long been a fear that attempts to use biotechnology to revive extinct species would give license to regulators to water down needed protections for existing plants and animals.
“The moral hazard in this work is gigantic, as its support by the Trump organization shows,” Stanford biologist Paul R. Ehrlich said. “Effort put into re-creating dire wolves only makes the threat to our civilization more dire, especially in view of the administration’s large-scale assault on our life-support systems and on science.”
Julie Meachen, a Des Moines University paleontologist who helped unravel the dire wolf genome but was not involved in the creation of Colossal’s three pups, does not consider the three canines to be “true” dire wolves.
But she is worried the Trump administration will use the idea that animals can be brought back from the dead “as a carte blanche to delist all the endangered species.”
“This technology does not replace protections for endangered species,” she added.
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Carolyn Y. Johnson and Maxine Joselow contributed to this report.