When the last Tasmanian tiger appears in CGI form at the film’s climax, walking slowly and alone through the snow, the impact of seeing the lost species in its natural habitat is quietly devastating. The mercenary, played by Willem Dafoe, makes an equally devastating and complicated choice. It’s not hard to find people who believe there’s truth to the film’s central idea – that the thylacine still lives out there somewhere – but despite hundreds of reported sightings, there’s no scientific evidence that it survived past 1936, when the last known specimen died. due to neglect at Hobart Zoo. What he has pointed out is how little, in relative terms, we prioritize our existing environment Since the 1990s, endless searches for the marsupial in the wilds of Tasmania and Victoria have been accompanied by another romantic idea – that it can be brought back through genetic engineering. For years, the main proponent of this idea was Professor Mike Archer, a former director of the Australian Museum who wanted to use DNA from preserved specimens in his collection. That mantle has now passed to Professor Andrew Pask of the University of Melbourne, who in 2017 led a project to sequence the thylacine genome, a necessary first step. While the ambition is familiar, the cash is new. Earlier this year Pask and his team received a philanthropic gift of $5 million to establish a thylacine (acronym: Tigrr) comprehensive genetic restoration research laboratory. Last week came the announcement that the lab had partnered with Colossal, an American “de-extinction” company that uses cutting-edge CRISPR gene-editing technology, for an even bigger sum. Ambition breeds big statements, and Pask and Colossal’s co-founder, tech and software entrepreneur Ben Lamm, have had their share. Their timelines differ slightly – Pask is more cautious – but both say the Tasmanian tiger could return to its homeland within a decade. It sounds fantastic in both senses. The suggestion by some that it was all a Jurassic Park-style pipe dream was perhaps not helped by the news that the film’s real stars – Chris Hemsworth and his brothers Luke and Liam – were among the backers. In Tasmania, where I live, it’s hard to overstate the controversial place the thylacine holds in the local psyche. Within a few decades of colonization, Europeans had mistakenly labeled it a cat, put a bounty on its head based on lies about how many sheep it had killed, and hunted it to extinction. When the last animal died, it was initially ignored. But it is celebrated on the state coat of arms and used to sell sports teams, hotels, beer and the island itself. Exploitation has rarely been more thorough. The thylacine, of course, was not a tiger, or a wolf. He wasn’t a dog either, though he looked like one. It was Australia’s only marsupial apex predator and its place in the landscape remains elusive almost a century later, unless you count feral cats. The scientists behind the recreational project are right when they say its reintroduction could have a positive impact on the ecosystem. In theory, he could go right back in. I’m not here to tell you what to think about this project. I’m certainly not here to say whether the plan – to process stem cells from a living marsupial with similar DNA, likely the Dunnart fat-tailed mouse, and turn the processed cells into a viable thylacine embryo and baby – will work. Smarter people with more expertise than me differ on this. But it is worth considering some of the questions that could lie ahead. A key one: to what extent would the recreated animal actually look and act like a thylacine? The editing process means that small variations in the original genome are probably unavoidable. Pask says they aim to make a 99.9% Tasmanian tiger, but it may involve some trial and error. Without experience with others of their kind, would test-tube-created thylacines know how to behave like wild thylacines? Some behaviors – hunting, for example – can be cruel, and there are examples of human-bred raptors being trained before being released into the wild. But upbringing has a role to play, and conservationists say it’s hard to know what the absence of a lineage would mean and impossible to predict how a new-model thylacine will interact with its ecosystem. Can a laboratory thylacine have enough genetic diversity to thrive, or will it end up struggling to maintain a viable population? Pask, who five years ago wrote a paper showing the thylacine was in poor genetic health before it was hunted to death, says addressing diversity is “nothing compared to bringing back the whole animal” and ” really sweat the small stuff,” as it could be done by sequencing the genomes of between 80 and 100 samples. Others, such as Professor Corey Bradshaw from Flinders University, are not convinced. Reaction to the project in the scientific community was mixed and included some understandable frustration that money is being spent on resurrecting a dead species when hundreds of living endangered species are being ignored by comparison. I see it a little differently. As Deakin University professor Euan Ritchie said, conservation funding is not a zero-sum game and support for de-extinction research has not come at the expense of other environmental protection. It’s extra. What he has pointed out is how little, in relative terms, we prioritize our existing environment. Ritchie gives an example: the previous federal government announced $10 million for 100 priority threatened species as native forests continued to be cleared and billions were spent on subsidies to expand fossil fuel industries. Pask says he hopes his team’s research will prove useful even if they fail to bring back the thylacine. It is his wish that the technology developed be used to preserve the genetic diversity of the growing list of endangered marsupials that could be wiped out. Which, given the challenges we face, is a noble idea. I am perhaps a little more naive. I hope our leaders make the necessary choices so we don’t have to rely on release projects to give our wildlife a future.
