Federal wildlife officials are betting on freezers. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) has teamed up with Colossal Biosciences, the “de-extinction” startup, and the company’s nonprofit Colossal Foundation to bank genetic samples from more than 2,300 vulnerable plant and animal species.
The reason is arithmetic. The Endangered Species Act of 1973 now covers 1,662 domestic and 638 foreign species. Gizmodo reports that the number of listed species has grown 300% since 1985, while federal funding has lagged, which has cut the resources behind each species by about half.
What goes in the vault
Samples will include cryopreserved DNA, tissues and reproductive cells, kept in Colossal’s distributed BioVault network. Each species will also get a digitized “reference genome.”
FWS director Brian Nesvik described the aim in cautious terms. The collaboration, he said in a statement, “will help advance our understanding of how biobanking and genomics can complement existing conservation tools and contribute to the recovery and long-term resilience of imperiled species.”
Matt James, Colossal’s chief animal officer, was bolder. “This initiative will redefine conservation in the United States,” he said. He added that the work creates “a permanent genetic record of America’s most vulnerable species before they’re lost.”
Open data, with a catch
The Colossal Foundation has raised $100 million in donations since late 2024. It says all genomic data produced under the FWS partnership will go into open-access repositories and be “provided at no cost” to federal managers, scientists and conservationists around the world. “Future conservationists won’t just inherit field notes and photographs,” James said. “They’ll inherit the genomic tools needed to understand, protect, and restore biodiversity at an unprecedented scale.”
What is not settled is the physical archive. Colossal has not explained how it might or might not seek to profit from the cryopreserved germlines and other biological material, Gizmodo noted. The company has already spun out businesses from its technology, among them Breaking, founded in 2024 to engineer plastic-degrading microbes, and Form Bio, founded in 2022, which licenses genetic analysis software.
Ben Lamm, Colossal’s CEO, compared the plan to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Colossal announced ten BioVault facilities in February, tied to a reportedly nine-figure initiative with the United Arab Emirates, which put at least $60 million into the firm.
A wider genetic record, one account of the announcement notes, could give scientists more ways to study disease resistance, breeding, habitat adaptation and recovery strategies in species already pressed by habitat loss and rising temperatures. Lamm framed the stakes simply: “Every species is a library of evolutionary innovation millions of years in the making. Once lost, that knowledge disappears forever.”
Sources
- The Company Trying to Bring Back the Mammoth Just Teamed Up With the US Government
- US joins 'de-extinction' startup to build a 'DNA ark' for 2,300 threatened species
