For example, after having declined to only 12 individuals in 1968, the population of Rodriguez Fody, a small, red-faced songbird, has recovered to over 8,000.
Mauritius, while having lost the majority of its endemic species, is home to some of the most incredible recovery projects of endangered species anywhere in the world. My time in Mauritius was a true crash course in the nation’s proud conservation movement. One of only 3 specimens of this extinct species in the world. Preserved specimen of the endemic Mauritius Blue Pigeon, collected in 1826, on display at the Mauritius Natural History Museum, Port Louis, Mauritius. The proposal was granted, so in August 2016, I joined Rick in Mauritius to begin sharing the possibilities of next-generation genetic rescue with local conservationists. He quickly submitted a travel grant proposal to the Mandela Washington Fellowship’s first “reverse exchange” program, which allows fellows to bring researchers (like me) from the United States to their countries to continue the projects hatched during their time in the U.S. When I told him the genome of the Dodo had been sequenced, Rick shifted from discussion to planning. We met and talked about various genetic rescue subjects over tea at the Long Now Foundation’s Interval Bar & Salon. Rick was touring American universities and conservation institutions on a prestigious Young African Leaders Initiative Mandela Washington Fellowship (a program begun by President Barack Obama in 2010) when he contacted me to discuss how Revive & Restore might work with the Mauritius community to use biotech for conservation, including for reviving the Dodo. Novak together researching Dodo fossil discoveries archived in the records of the Mauritius National Heritage Fund office. This summer, I was able to start the dialogue that could one day lead to the revival of the Dodo, thanks to the help of another young conservationist and Mauritius citizen: Rick-Ernest Bonnier. This achievement made Dodo de-extinction possible.Īnyone that has watched my TEDx DeExtinction talk on the Passenger Pigeon knows that the Dodo bird is the bird that started my adolescent passion for de-extinction. Dodo DNA has proven extremely difficult to find.īut in January 2016, Beth Shapiro, an evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, announced at the Plant and Animal Genomes XXIV conference that the whole genome of the extinct Dodo bird had been sequenced. However, there is one big problem: a lack of Dodo DNA. And at first glance, beginning the Dodo de-extinction project seemed feasible after all, the innovative reproductive technologies being used to revive the Passenger Pigeon (Revive & Restore’s flagship project) would also work for the Dodo.
Skeleton of the extinct Dodo, endemic to Mauritius, on display at the Mauritius Natural History Museum, Port Louis, Mauritius.Īt Revive & Restore, we receive a fair amount of emails from supporters expressing their hopes and interest in reviving the Dodo.
0 kommentar(er)
