Company Is Planning 'Real Life Jurassic Park' With Woolly Mammoths Brought Back To Life
It's becoming increasingly apparent that we need to take decisive action to tackle climate change - and what could be more decisive than bringing back woolly flippin' mammoths??
Of course, we can all play our part by living as sustainably as we can, but walking to work and recycling bean tins isn't as exciting as bringing back those big hairy elephants.
The idea is that mammoths – as with elephants – are particularly adept at bashing down forests, which might not sound conducive to helping climate change, but it could create large grasslands in the tundra of Siberia, which could help to preserve the permafrost, beneath which huge amounts of harmful gases and carbon are stored.
The project is the brainchild of Colossal – a company that wants to bring thousands of woolly mammoths back into the world in the not so distant future.
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The creatures went extinct around 4,000 years ago, but Colossal believe they could play a vital role in preserving the future of our planet.
Without getting too far into the actual science – because, unsurprisingly, it's rather complicated – this isn't exactly cloning; rather, they want to take mammoth genetics and put them into existing Asian elephants, the mammoth's closest modern day relative.
The company is founded by geneticist George Church and technology entrepreneur Ben Lamm, and the latter told LADbible it could be a 'f***ing cool' way of protecting the planet.
"There is no silver bullet when it comes to climate change," he said.
"It's going to take a while to get to Arctic re-wilding, we're going to have our first few calves in four to six years, and it's going to take six to seven years before they can be truly self-sustainable and knocking down trees, so it's going to take a while.
"We need to be looking at solar and alternative energy sources, we need to be moving to electric, there's a million other things that humanity needs to do.
"I don't think that Colossal is the be all and end all, but it is a natural plan and what’s nice about it is that we think we can sequester a lot of carbon and keep the permafrost cooler and we think that we can suppress a lot of methane from being released.
"Methane is about 30 times worse for the world than carbon. There is more carbon and methane trapped in the Arctic than anywhere else.
"Our hope is that we can get to thousands of elephants in a reasonable time period, and if we can, we can really play a role in suppressing carbon and methane in the Arctic, that's our goal and that’s where I think we can leave the biggest impact."
While no doubt many of us would agree that it is a 'f***ing cool' idea, others have raised ethical concerns about the plan, accusing the company of 'playing God'. Lamm isn't having that, though.
He said: "Regardless of your philosophical or religious views, I think that wherever you fall on that spectrum, we can all agree that we have a duty to protect this planet.
"Someone said that until Elon [Musk] figures out Mars there is no 'Planet B', right?
"We've got this one, this is our station in this universe right now, so we have a duty to protect that and everything that exists on it.
"When you lose a keystone species the entire ecosystem falls apart, whether that’s a herbivore or a predator or whatever.
"What we're doing is trying to build better tools to give modern day conservationists a winning chance against what humanity is currently doing."
Jake Massey