Skip to main content

Discussions on de-extinction

In her new book, alumna Britt Wray looks at complex issues behind recreating lost species with the science of ‘de-extinction’
October 3, 2017
|
By Lucas Napier-Macdonald


As an honour’s biology undergraduate student at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., Britt Wray, GrDip (comm. studies) 10, realized she had a big problem: she despised the laboratory.

“I hated being in there, and I had to be there a lot of the time,” Wray admitted in her 2013 TEDx talk at OCAD University in Toronto.

Britt Wray, GrDip 10 Britt Wray is author of Rise of the Necrofauna: The Science, Ethics, and Risks of De-extinction. | Photo: Arden Wray

Yet she didn’t hate science. She liked it a lot, as a matter of fact. Wray wasn’t riveted by the “empirical, nitty-gritty investigations into the natural world,” she says. “It was the meta-stories of science that made me feel excited about exploring the human and non-human biological world.”

So Wray set out to become a scientific storyteller instead. She has since worked with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and British Broadcasting Corporation, and hosted a podcast of her own, The Tympanic Eclipse, aiming to tell the fascinating stories science has to offer.

Wray has now published Rise of the Necrofauna: The Science, Ethics, and Risks of De-extinction (Greystone Books), which examines the booming field that aims to bring extinct species — or at least close proxies of them — back to life.

She took some time out of her busy schedule to talk about the implications of “de-extinction” and her days at Concordia.

Why did you decide to come to Concordia for a graduate diploma in communication studies?

Britt Wray: “I was looking for a way to transition from my science background into broadcasting. Concordia had this program that was really great, because it was so interdisciplinary. It gave you hands-on tools, but you could also take graduate courses in critical theory.

I had to bring the scientific aspect myself, but it was a great stepping stone from pure science into more media-based and artistic approaches.”

How did you become interested in de-extinction?

Rise of the Necrofauna: The Science, Ethics, and Risks of De-extinction Cover of Britt Wray's book Rise of the Necrofauna: The Science, Ethics, and Risks of De-extinction.

BW: “While I was at Concordia, I took a PhD course on something called bioart, or the ways in which artists and designers are getting involved in biotechnology and doing surprising things with it: creating semi-living sculptures from tissue engineering or cloning bacteria in art installations, for example.

I didn’t know about synthetic biology — a field that makes de-extinction possible. Then my professor, Tagny Duff, sent me the website of a designer she thought I’d like, a woman named Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg, who’s asking questions about how to properly ‘design’ life with synthetic biology.

I became interested in synthetic bio, doing a masters and then a PhD on it. Then de-extinction came along, and it sat at the nexus between my original training — conservation biology — and synthetic biology, my more recent fascination. I started getting into the ethics of it, did some documentary work and then started writing the book.”

In Undoing Forever, a radio documentary you did for the CBC, you discuss passenger pigeons, extinct birds that used to travel across North America in flocks of billions. The effect it had on the environment couldn’t have been negligible. What would some of the consequences of bringing it back be?

BW: “The passenger pigeon is the most populous bird species that humans are known to have ever interacted with, and we hunted it out of existence in less than 50 years. The ecological impact was enormous. What they did very well was cause forest disturbance. Lots of things can do this — hail storms or fires — but bringing the passenger pigeon back might be able to fulfill that ecosystem service that is no longer there in such quantities.

Yet there are other impacts that it might have, as well. There are many more people living in the northeastern United States now than there were when the passenger pigeon went extinct in 1914. Would it not be frightening to hear these thundering wings above if we roosted them back in huge numbers? And what about the bird droppings on people’s cars? These are things that quickly come to mind.”

Where do you stand on de-extinction?

BW: “I stand in the corner that says: ‘We need a lot more research that shows how this will actually pan out.’ We need examples of this working to actually be able to determine anything.

Right now, there’s a lot of theory, there’s a lot of cheerleading, there’s a lot of hype. And all of that is healthy for generating debate, but we don’t have a lot of evidence-based research on how this will actually work.”

Britt Wray meeting Sudan Britt Wray meeting Sudan, the last living male northern white rhinoceros, at the Ol Pejeta conservancy in Kenya in 2016. She was there doing research for her book. | Photo: Sebastian Damm

Futurist Alex Steffen coined the expression “charismatic necrofauna,” or species that people want brought back because they intrigue us. The woolly mammoth comes to mind. Notwithstanding the possible consequences of de-extinction, do you have your own charismatic necrofauna?

BW: “Well, they’ve only gone extinct in the wild, but the northern white rhinoceros is a species I’d love to see helped by these types of synthetic biology tools. They’re a marvellous, unique species that we’ve hunted down, and it’s devastating.

Like other people, emotional triggers can make you root for certain species. That can be problematic because it’s also what makes us sometimes have this bias towards charismatic animals — beautiful mammals and birds — and want to fight for their conservation rather than the hordes and hordes of invertebrate species that don’t necessarily make us feel warm and fuzzy inside but need consideration, too.”

#CUalumni

Related links



Back to top

© Concordia University