Colossal Dire Wolf: Fiction or Reality?

Sustainability Fiction Applied to the Real World

We are going to talk about the de-extincted dire wolves

Look at them, still growing

Just when I started ushering up this page with the goal of empowering creative writing with an underlying sustainability outreach goal, this bomb is dropped right in front of us.

Yes, I am talking about the Colossal de-extinction programme. They have just brought back 3 dire wolves to life, and I, as elusive as I am of sci-fi, couldn’t help but be too fascinated by it.

Okay, that is exactly where critical thinking has got to come into place, but please, not too grumpily or over-intellectually. I aim to have a scientific approach in my analysis of this, which will be emotionless, even though my emotions would immediately lead me to love it.

As much as I love sci-fi, I have it very clear in my mind that the main drive of any project, including this one in front of whoever is reading it, is money, so this is the first lens I would have to view Colossal’s endeavours through.

Coming into the facts — Harvard Medical School geneticist George Church, PhD, had a project for de-extincting the woolly mammoth. At that time, we can think of him as an academic researcher — a father of synthetic biology, in fact — with a big idea in mind. As there are many out there, waiting for someone bold enough to take the risk and invest in their ideas. He had a focus on mammoths, and at this point, we should clarify that there are many, many species of mammoth that roamed this Earth. In this case, we are talking specifically about this not-too-big mammoth species, the woolly mammoth, that existed on Earth as recently as 4000 years ago. Yes, they coexisted very extensively with humans, and this, I would say, wasn’t the best experience for them, hence why they are gone.

Here is a picture of the man behind it -

Back to the story, Church’s idea was that the mammoth would have a positive net worth impact on the tundra environment. Mammoths could help to restore the steppe ecosystem by reducing shrub cover and promoting the growth of grasses. This could lead to lower ground temperatures and prevent the thawing of permafrost, which releases large amounts of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere. The restoration of the steppe ecosystem could increase carbon sequestration in the soil, further mitigating the effects of climate change.

His research showed that it was very much possible to de-extinct this species. Their closest relatives, Indian elephants, are alive today and capable of gestating the new synthetically created mammoth. Curiously, Indian mammoths (note: usually referred to as Asian elephants) are more closely related to the extinct woolly mammoth than they are to current African elephant species. And this is very important because the plan is to use Asian elephants as surrogates to bring back the mammoth.

So, how does it all come to be that right now, in 2025, we have 3 dire wolves running around out there somewhere unknown in the United States? Colossal made it clear that their locations will be undisclosed. In that, I think they are right; surely somebody would have put the wolves at risk had it been revealed.

They state that every plan, every resurrection that is made, has an underlying conservation goal. This, I believe, is a credible way to frame it. So in this particular case, the dire wolf project correlates with the existing, about-to-be-extinguished red wolves. Of those, there are only around 15, and they are going through what is called a genetic bottleneck, that is, there isn’t enough genetic variety among them, and they are bound to go extinct. In such a case, they would use technology developed for the dire wolf project to synthesise genes of the red wolves and add some specimens with more genetic variety to the mix, therefore bringing them back. And by the way, they created 4 red wolves, 1 more than the dire wolves.

Here is the picture of one of the newly resurrected puppies

I, at first, question if it would be necessary for them to actually make an entire dire wolf to reach such discoveries. Couldn’t it be that they would research the red wolf ancestors and make the genome comparisons, run the whole technology they have, and suddenly some genetic variety would come about anyway? I believe that the justification is the nonlinear nature of technological development, which is true. By treading such a steep innovative path, it is indeed inherent that sideways discoveries are made, and I consider it great that conservation fruits are already being reaped from this initiative.

But I in no way would believe in a narrative that the dire wolves were necessary for conservation. I would pose it in that manner: the dire-wolf resurrection effort naturally boosts conservation innovation efforts around the world, and even more so for the dwindling, about-to-go-extinct, poor red wolves. More importantly, for the red wolves and all the other conservation species that will benefit from this, is the appealing nature of resurrecting such an iconic species. Names such as George RR Martin and Peter Jackson are well-known funders of Colossal Biosciences.

I say it because my view is that such an elusive movement brings media attention, hits the sweet spot of those imaginative people with deep pockets out there, all framed through funding for the greater conservation good.

This brings me to this last point — 

All in all, I see the project with great potential. It can bring forward conservation efforts more because of the eyes and money it brings than because of its premise. Like it or not, funding is necessary, and bringing a dire wolf back is much more elusive and appealing to people than supporting an unknown eco-beneficial bird species that is not much known about in pop culture. I praise them for bringing money to conservation in creative ways, even though I don’t think their main goal is conservation itself.

Source — JRE #2301 — Ben Lamm

Written by Marqv Neves, Author of The Jacksons’ Debate

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/228994545-the-jacksons-debate