Colossal Biosciences Uses De-Extinction Technology to Save Endangered Species

Species are disappearing at a rate scientists say is roughly 1,000 times higher than normal, with more than 48,000 species currently threatened and up to half of all species at risk by 2050. It’s something that deserves more attention on Earth Day of all days.

“That’s not a projection about some distant future,” Matt James, Chief Animal Officer at Colossal Biosciences and Executive Director of the Colossal Foundation, told ScreenRant earlier this week in an effort to shift the focus to real conservation challenges. “That’s the trajectory we’re already on.”

First established in 1970, Earth Day was created to raise awareness about environmental protection and has since grown into a global movement focused on issues like climate change, habitat loss, and biodiversity decline. For this year’s Earth Day, I spoke with Colossal Biosciences about the company’s conservation work, most of which receives far less attention than its high-profile de-extinction efforts. But they’re intrinsically linked.

It’s easy to be fascinated by the idea of dire wolves or woolly mammoths roaming the earth again, and Colossal’s earned attention for their Jurassic Park-style work on these fronts, but as this very real biodiversity crisis accelerates, James explains that the tools traditionally used to address it are no longer keeping pace.

“The tools are good,” he said. “They’re just not built for the speed of what’s happening right now.”

Through the Colossal Foundation, the company is applying new tools developed through its de-extinction research to real-world conservation efforts, from protecting endangered species to developing solutions aimed at preventing extinction before it happens.

Why Conservation Alone Isn’t Keeping Up

Red Wolves Show Where Conservation Breaks Down

Colossal’s red wolf clone at 5 months

Biodiversity loss is moving faster than conservation efforts, Colossal’s leadership emphasizes in many of our conversations. For decades, the focus of these efforts has been protecting habitat, managing breeding programs, and stopping poaching. That’s important but doesn’t solve the larger issue.

A clear example of this is in the American red wolf, one of the most endangered canids in the world and the only wolf endemic to the United States. Fewer than 20 are left in the wild, and the captive population of around 250 traces back to a small group of founders, meaning inbreeding is a massive problem.

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ScreenRant previously reported on Colossal’s conservation work through the story of Neka Kayda, the world’s first cloned red wolf, highlighting how these tools are already being applied to species on the brink.

“When you’re down to fewer than 20 wild individuals… the diversity is just gone… The best way to get that genetic material back… is cloning. There’s no other viable path.”

At that point, protecting habitat is no longer enough. The gene pool has already collapsed. Even under ideal conditions, the population cannot recover without restoring lost genetic diversity.

Through the Colossal Foundation, that work is already underway, using tools developed through de-extinction research to try and rebuild what has been lost so the red wolves have a real shot long-term of expanding their population in the wild.

How De-Extinction Technology Is Already Being Used to Save Endangered Species

Colossal’s technology, largely developed for de-extinction efforts, is already being used in several conservation efforts far beyond the genetic rescue work with red wolves. There’s the development of a vaccine for a lethal disease affecting elephants, AI-powered monitoring of wolf populations in Yellowstone, and broader efforts to restore genetic diversity in critically endangered species, including amphibian disease resistance and genetic rescue programs for species like the northern quoll.

“I get the criticism. I really do. But I’d push back on the assumption that it’s zero sum,” James said in response to the criticisms about Colossal focusing on de-extinction versus protecting living species.

“The tools we’re building for the mammoth are directly applicable to living endangered species today,” James adds.

He continues:

“The cloning infrastructure we built for the dire wolf is the same infrastructure the red wolf program runs on. The CRISPR work we’re doing for cold tolerance in mammoths informs Asian elephant conservation. And honestly, in four years Colossal raised $615 million for conservation technology. In my 15 years before that, we probably raised $5 million. The moonshot aspect is bringing resources to a fight that has been chronically underfunded. If we waited until every living species was safe before building these tools, the tools wouldn’t exist when we need them.”

Much of that work is carried out through the Colossal Foundation, which focuses on applying these tools to real-world conservation efforts. One key example of this is the effort to develop a vaccine for elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus, or EEHV.

“Asian elephant populations in managed care lose young animals to EEHV at a rate that meaningfully suppresses population growth. A functional vaccine doesn’t just save individual animals. It changes the demographic trajectory of the managed population and increases the number of animals available for rewilding programs.”

“That’s a direct conservation impact, and it’s not hypothetical at this point,” James emphasized.

How AI and New Technology Are Changing Wildlife Conservation

New tools are also changing how conservation happens in the field. Using AI-powered bioacoustics, researchers can monitor and track species across large areas without direct human presence and it’s wildly applicable and scalable for other species.

“We’re using it in Yellowstone National Park with gray wolves; we’re using it in Samburu National Park with African elephants; and we just deployed it to Samoa…” James said during my visit to Colossal’s new Dallas headquarters in February.

In Samoa, the system helped locate a species of bird that had not been seen in over a decade.

“…there is a species of bird that was thought to be extinct for 13 years, and in its first deployment we pinged it 43 times… the bird’s been seen by a human for the first time in 13 years.”

The system analyzes sound data in real time. “It analyzes spectrograms from bioacoustical data, and it’s able to tell you it’s a call from this animal or this one,” James said during that visit.

The tools are built in-house and always evolving. “I’ve got a team of three people on the foundation that all they do is they’re just AI engineers,” James said, noting the same group is also developing systems to identify individual elephants and track behavior in the wild.

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That data can be used to reduce conflict between animals and humans by identifying patterns and predicting risk areas before encounters happen.

Colossal provides the software to conservation partners at no cost and deploys the hardware in the field.

What the Biodiversity Crisis Looks Like This Earth Day

For James, the biodiversity crisis shows up in real cases where conservation efforts reach their limits. I asked what this looks like up close.

“It looks like animals that shouldn’t be dead. A cheetah with inbreeding so severe its immune system can’t respond normally to pathogens a genetically diverse carnivore handles fine. Elephant calves that are physiologically healthy and dead from EEHV in 24 hours. A red wolf population where every breeding season is a demographic coin flip because there are so few animals left. Big picture, the crisis is statistics. Up close it’s individual animals and the people who’ve spent careers trying to keep them alive running out of tools. That’s what gets me out of bed.”

Those examples reflect the same pattern: populations pushed to the point where existing tools can no longer stabilize them.

“The Foundation is the translation layer… Colossal builds the platform technologies, and the Foundation connects them to species that need them right now,” James said.

“We have 40-plus conservation partners right now running dozens of separate projects.”

He argues the next step is expanding the toolkit.

“The Foundation’s position is that biodiversity loss is solvable. But only if we’re honest that the current toolkit isn’t enough and stop treating that admission like it’s an attack on the field. What we’re doing differently is refusing to separate protecting what’s here from recovering what we’ve lost. Those aren’t competing priorities. They’re the same mission at different points on the timeline. Earth Day feels like a good moment to say out loud: the conservation field has done extraordinary work with the tools available. It hasn’t been enough. Adding de-extinction tools such as genomic and reproductive biotechnology to the toolkit isn’t a concession. It’s what the evidence demands.”

As Earth Day places a limited-time spotlight on protecting the environment, there’s a lot to be hopeful for from the many conservation groups adopting and helping develop new tools like these examples from Colossal Biosciences that can be additive to current efforts, and can ideally turn the tide for endangered species.

Sources: Colossal Foundation, IUCN Red List of Threatened Species, World Organisation for Animal Health