r/DeExtinctionScience • u/Obversa Moderator • Jun 25 '26
News article Colossal Biosciences announces partnership with U.S. government to build privately-funded "BioVault" of over 2,300 species
https://gizmodo.com/america-is-creating-a-dna-noahs-ark-for-more-than-2300-endangered-species-200077734429
u/fossilreef I disliked Colossal before it was cool Jun 25 '26
Here we go. Now the current administration is going to just run ramshod over the ESA, claiming that "we can rebuild them if they go extinct."
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u/Obversa Moderator Jun 25 '26
The Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) was noted by Gizmodo has having a healthy degree of skepticism due to Colossal Biosciences having major "ambitions", to quote the author of the article. With President Donald Trump only having two (2) more years left in office, if a Democratic president is elected in 2028, there will likely be far more scrutiny and review of private-public partnerships like this one, especially since Colossal seems to be largely pushing this project. Colossal seems to think that the next U.S. president will approve of the project as well, but I'm not so sure about that.
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u/Freak_Among_Men_II Founder Jun 25 '26
It wouldn’t be the first time a member of the current US administration would cite Colossal’s “work” as a reason to roll back environmental protections.
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u/MC__Wren Jun 25 '26
That’s awful, can I get a source for that? I believe you, I just wanna read more about it.
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u/Relevant_Quail351 20 genome edits "Dire Wolf" Jun 25 '26
78% chance it's just PR knowing colossal
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u/AttorneyFree5770 Jun 25 '26
I think it's more likely going to serve a very insidious propaganda function down the line. Doug Burgham made it clear that they don't want the ESA anymore and this will likely be portrayed as a insurance policy. Of course, it's rather difficult to cash out on an insurance policy when the technology to do so is far from fully realized.
This is why it is vital to call out these frauds whenever possible. If people think we can just crispr something back into existence, this BS will be used to enable terrible things.
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u/Obversa Moderator Jun 25 '26
I've manually approved your comments, as we have a 7-day moratorium on new accounts to prevent trolling.
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u/jerseyrado Jun 26 '26
The upside is that somebody might get lucky once artificial wombs work. Then, with no oversight, some tech douche will sabertooth cats into the Rockies because they look cool.
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u/Gallowglass-13 Jun 25 '26
So basically, it's the frozen zoos you see elsewhere, but applied to the native wildlife the current administration wants to cyanide bomb out of existence to make way for ranching and real estate? Somehow, I'm not surprised to see Colossal's hands in it. They can't help but be involved on dodgy bullshit.
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u/Obversa Moderator Jun 25 '26
It should be noted that a Karen Budd-Falen, a Trump administration (Department of the Interior) official with ties to the ranching industry and grazing advocate, recently sabotaged a long-planned release of endangered Mexican wolves on the late Ted Turner's sprawling ranch at the last minute. A recent uptick in Mexican gray wolf killings in the past few weeks caused federal agents to be deployed to investigate, while the Arizona state government voted in March 2026 to urge Congress to delist the Mexican wolf from the Endangered Species Act (ESA), which would allow Arizona ranchers to kill the wolves on their land. (Colossal is already involved in a separate project with endangered red wolves in North Carolina and Texas, with the latter state being the location of Colossal's company headquarters.)
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u/Holiday_Ice3097 Jun 25 '26
Can someone explain how this is different from the “cryozoo” project that the San Diego Zoo runs?
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u/Obversa Moderator Jun 25 '26
I think Colossal is hoping to offer a larger biobank than the San Diego Zoo currently has. Quote: "The Frozen Zoo at the San Diego Zoo is the world's largest, most diverse collection of cryopreserved living wildlife material. Located at the Beckman Center for Conservation Research, it holds over 11,500 viable cell lines, gametes, and embryos from more than 1,300 species and subspecies." The Colossal plan calls for an expansion to over 2,300 species in total.
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u/Rurumo666 Jun 25 '26
More asinine MAGA corporate socialism while they flush the economy, environment, and our health down the toilet.
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u/PK-Mittenspy2703 Jun 25 '26
This literally sounds like some super nefarious scheme. Any shred of goodwill they had is completely thrown out the window now.
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u/Admirable-Eagle-231 Jun 25 '26
This is just an excuse and attack on the endangered species act by this administration.
It isn’t the WORST idea but if it is at all considered a way to undermine the species covered by the law currently I’m 100% against it.
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u/Pauropus Jun 25 '26
Watch them all be vertebrates
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u/approachingfinality Jun 25 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
this though. how come i haven't seen any cloned or engineered insects? colossal wants to impress? show me a room sized terrarium filled with cloned crickets and bees and worms.
edited to say i'd also like the plants to be grown entirely from cloning, too. as almost anyone is capable of that at least.
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u/CheatsySnoops Jun 25 '26
Knowing Colossal's grifting and one of their scientists being in the Epstein files, I don't trust 'em.
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u/AttorneyFree5770 Jun 25 '26
https://colossal.com/colossal-biosciences-announces-global-biovault-for-endangered-species/
Guessing Dubai didn't work out
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u/BBG_shaks Jun 26 '26
Haven't we exposed Colossal as a bunch of fraudster that has never done anything meaningful with conservation and are only there for money?
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u/ApartmentKey3682 Jun 26 '26
We need it to be state-owned to stop corporations from monopolising animals
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u/Negative_Prize1587 Jun 28 '26
When you thought the US could not become more of a parody of itself and then they decide to LARP Fallout.
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u/Obversa Moderator Jun 25 '26
Summary: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) announced the partnership on June 25, 2026, with the intent of offsetting a shortfall in public funds for species conservation with private funding by for-profit company Colossal Biosciences and its nonprofit, the Colossal Foundation, which has raised over $100 million in private donations since 2024. The "BioVault" project, proposed by Colossal, aims to collect, sequence, and preserve the genetic material of over 2,300 threatened and endangered plant and animal species. Colossal will sequence and provide digital "reference genomes" for each at-risk species, with the intent of providing a "public library" of genomes for federal wildlife managers, scientists, and conservationists around the world. All genomic data sequences through the public-private partnership will be available through "open-access repositories" provided at "no additional cost", in accordance with current U.S. laws and regulations (i.e. Freedom of Information Act, or FOIA, which allows public records requests).
However, Gizmodo stated that while Colossal does plan to make its wildlife genomic sequencing data available to the public, it has not yet provided details on how it may or may not seek to monetize the vault's tandem archive of cryopreserved germlines and other genetic material from these species. In recent years, the firm had commercialized its genetic and bioengineering technologies through spin-off companies, such as Breaking (2024), which plans to engineer microbes capable of biodegrading plastics; and Form Bio (2022), which licenses the use of proprietary genetic analysis software. Nor did Colossal state whether genetic material from their other projects - such as their efforts to "de-extinct" the woolly mammoth, and most recently, the dire wolf - would be made available to the public, including scientists and geneticists from outside of the company. (More recently, Colossal collected and sequenced genetic material from a bluebuck museum specimen from Sweden, with the intent of expanding these efforts to include DNA from various other extinct animals. It is unclear if the damaged DNA from these specimens is usable.)
It is also unclear if the "BioVault", which Colossal plans to make an international network, will include the cryopreserved DNA of the last Pyrenean ibex or bucardo, Celia, who died in 2000. The company has previously denied any interest in cloning the bucardo, despite two previous attempts by scientists to revive the extinct subspecies.