TEXAS. April 7, 2025. A for-profit Texas company named Colossal Biosciences announced in a press release on Monday the “rebirth of the once extinct dire wolf,” which it claims is the “world’s first successfully de-extincted animal.”
The press release explains:
The dire wolf, largely assumed to be a legendary creature made famous from the HBO hit series Game of Thrones, was an American canid that had previously been extinct for over 12,500 years.
The successful birth of three dire wolves is a revolutionary milestone of scientific progress that illustrates another leap forward in Colossal’s de-extinction technologies and is a critical step on the pathway to the de-extinction of other target species.
This appears to be a zoological first. No government, government-funded professor or university, or charity group ever brought a species out of extinction previously.
This achievement highlights the great strides in conservation made by private enthusiasts compared to the constant–and expensive failures of governments to preserve animal species. Penn & Teller’s “Bullshit” series explored the failure of the U.S. government’s Endangered Species Act of 1973.
Endangered Species Act has been a failure.
One of worst laws ever passed, according to RJ Smith of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Endangered Species Act gave government the power of total national land use control–but has done little or nothing to save endangered species.
According to Penn & Teller, some 1827 species have been listed under the Act as endangered or threatened. Only 40 have ever been delisted. Nine have gone extinct. Sixteen were listed by mistake. This leaves 15 supposed success stories. Of those, three are kangaroos (in Australia). Three are birds in Palou that were undercounted. Three species recovered due to stoppage of use of DDT and the substitute of other pesticides. One recovered species is the American alligator (which was likely undercounted in previous generations). One is the Robbins Cinquefoil, a plant in New Hampshire that may have recovered by moving some hiking trails. One is the Columbian white tail deer, and another is a subspecies of the Canadian goose. Both of those were saved by simply by hunting restrictions.
The Tinian Monarch is a species of bird found only in the Mariana Islands. The birds now number some 38,000 and the role played by the Endangered Species Act in the bird’s salvation is debatable. The grey whale was already recovering BEFORE the Endangered Species Act, due to private agreements to stop harvesting whales. Then there is “Hoovers woolly star,” a plant found in over a thousand locations in southern California. According to Brian Seasholes of the Reason Foundation, “Hoover’s woolly-star is clearly a case of data error under the Endangered Species Act. It was delisted after biologists admitted it was originally miscounted; but ironically the plant is still listed as “recovering” under the Endangered Species Act.
New species are being discovered every year, and the earth now has greater biodiversity than ever before in its history.
Private pet breeders and hobbyists—often acting illegally—have saved more endangered species than all governments combined. Examples include:
- Budweiser beer corporation saved the clydsdales.
- Private breeders saved the Irish wolfhound from the brink of extinction–without any assistance from government.
- Another species, the Scimitar Oryx, a gazelle-like mammal in Chad, has been rescued from the brink of extinction by private ranchers, herders and zoos.
- •Efforts of private hobbyists also led to successful reintroduction of the endangered Spanish toothcarp and three endangered Aphanius species (A. apodus, A. danfordii and A. sirhani), as well as the wild-extinct Potosi pupfish.
- (Cyprinodon alvarezi) by the Spanish Killifish Association (SEK) [12].
- Many species (mainly livebearer, cichlids, and killifish species) are available only from aquarium hobbyists (approximately a quarter of aquarium species are exclusively owned by hobbyists),
Indeed, over 30 species of fish are now alive which have gone extinct in the wild—thanks to private fish hobbyists.
