Company plans to bring back South Island giant moa
Using advanced genetic engineering, iwi Ngāi Tahu, Canterbury Museum, and US biotech firm Colossal Biosciences plan to extract DNA from preserved moa remains to recreate the towering flightless bird.
Senior curator of natural history at Canterbury Museum which holds the largest collection of moa remains in the world, Paul Scofield, says he's optimistic about the collaboration.
He says they hope to eventually have an ecological reserve on Ngāi Tahu land for moa.
The South Island giant moa stood up to 3.6 metres tall, weighed around 230kg and typically lived in forests and shrubbery. 100% confidence in project
Colossal Biosciences chief executive and co-founder Ben Lamm said humans drove the moa to extinction so if technology could help bring it back and contribute to saving other existing species as well as inspire children it would be "the holy grail".
Ngāi Tahu Research Centre would effectively be like a board of directors for the project, he told RNZ.
While the business worked with conservationists and indigenous groups all over the world, "we've never had this level of cultural immersion before ... the excitement here at Colossal is just palpable."
The project had only just started, however, he was confident that within a decade a moa hatchling would be a reality "and back on this planet".
"I hope it's closer to five or six [years] ... worst case ten, but it's still miraculous in terms of that technology curve."
Ngāi Tahu Research Centre would be the owners of the moa and would have a full input into everything being done.
The habitat still existed that the moa would live in, however, "we don't expect them to be running through Christchurch."
He was 100 percent confident moa would become a reality because the tools and technology existed.
"We're just advancing them further."
Sir Peter Jackson who is funding the project said he had assumed years ago that many scientific wonders would become a reality in his lifetime.
However, it hasn't happened and he was impressed with the work of Colossal Biosciences which "has rekindled my hope for the future", he said on the company's website. 'Astonishing leaps'
Scofield told RNZ the project was "an astonishing opportunity".
The US firm was world-leading in its field and was also trying to bring back the woolly mammoth, the dodo, the Tasmanian tiger and other extinct animals.
It was making "astonishing leaps on an almost daily basis".
The museum's main role was to ensure the project was Māori-led. It was working with the Ngāi Tahu Research Centre at the University of Canterbury and also ensuring all the concerns of Māori were addressed.
"The research will actually benefit Māori economically in creating a vast ecological reserve on Māori land where moa are actually are able to be seen."
The necessary DNA would come partly from the remains at the museum but also from freshly excavated material.
The latter would be better quality because some of the former had been stored for 160 years.
"We're hoping the combination of freshly excavated material and the collections themselves will enable us to have the genetic resources we require for this project."
The process was called de-extinction because thousands of genes would need to be identified covering the moa's size, brain capacity, feathers, colour, eyesight and other characteristics.
Then a related living species would be used as a genetic surrogate.
"Doing things that have effectively never been done before outside the human genome to actually recreate animals that are actually to all intents and purposes are exactly analagous to the extinct species."
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