Conservation has traditionally been understood as an act of protection. We set aside habitats, control pollution, restore ecosystems and try, as best we can, to reduce the pressures driving species toward extinction.

Faced with an alarming increase in the rate of extinction, scientists and policymakers are increasingly looking to biotechnology for solutions. Scientists are now using gene editing tools such as CRISPR to redesign the genomes of wild animals. The aim is not simply to study them, but to help them survive: to make corals more tolerant of warmer oceans, frogs more resistant to disease, mosquitoes unable to reproduce, and perhaps even to recreate species that disappeared from the Earth centuries ago.

The question these technologies raise is both practical and philosophical. At what point does conservation stop being conservation and become ecological engineering?

Instead of changing the systems causing biodiversity loss, these tools increasingly change the animals themselves so they can survive in environments humans have damaged. That shift may prove to be one of the most profound transformations in the history of conservation.

Engineering Survival

The scale of the biodiversity crisis is difficult to grasp. Nearly one million species are now threatened with extinction, according to the UN Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services.

Conservation biotechnology has emerged in response to this crisis. It combines advances in genetics, cloning and synthetic biology with the goals of conservation biology.

In a recent review paper, researchers Torill Blix and Anne Ingeborg Myhr mapped the rapidly expanding landscape of genome editing in wild animals. Below is an examination of the broad themes of the review, with input from co-author Blix.

In their paper, Blix and Myhr identified three broad aims. The first is to help vulnerable species adapt more quickly than evolution can manage on its own. The second is to suppress or modify harmful populations such as disease-carrying mosquitoes or invasive rodents. The third is the most dramatic: de-extinction, the attempt to create living proxies of species that have disappeared entirely.

Taken together, these projects suggest that conservation is no longer only about shielding nature from harm. It is increasingly about redesigning life itself.

According to Blix, “I think we can see conservation biotechnology as a branch of conservation biology connected to rewilding and other initiatives already ongoing where the goal is to design ecosystems. The technology is an add-on to this way of thinking, and with that, it reinforces the conviction that humans have the ability to control it.”

Helping Species Adapt

Some uses of gene editing appear, at least initially, like an extension of familiar conservation practices.

On Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, researchers are exploring editing corals to better tolerate rising ocean temperatures to combat bleaching. Also in Australia, the critically endangered southern corroboree frog is being edited to give it genetic resistance to chytridiomycosis, a fungal disease that has devastated amphibian populations worldwide. In Hawaii, scientists have modelled the possibility of editing the ʻiʻiwi honeycreeper to withstand avian malaria as warming temperatures allow mosquitoes to spread higher into the mountains.

Facilitated adaptation is an attempt to buy time. The question is whether we are helping species survive while we address the causes of decline, or whether we begin to treat adaptation itself as the solution.

Reprogramming the Problem

The second category of projects moves beyond protecting threatened species and toward controlling populations deemed harmful.

Here Blix and Myhr found research on various mosquitoes carrying human and avian pathogens, mouse carrying Lyme disease in ticks, as well as invasive mice, squirrel and cane toads. There are also population suppression objectives in this category, e.g. spreading sterility amongst a population of malaria carrying mosquitoes. Sometimes, the objective is population modification, not eradication, such as reducing toxicity of cane toads in Australia.

Here, conservation becomes more overtly managerial. Species are no longer simply protected; they are modified or removed to achieve desired ecological outcomes.

Such interventions could offer benefits, but they also demonstrate a growing confidence in our ability to shape ecosystems. Nature is dynamic and deeply interconnected. Altering one trait in one species may trigger effects that cascade through food webs and ecosystems in ways that are difficult, if not impossible, to predict.

The Seduction of Resurrection

The most striking development in conservation biotechnology is de-extinction.

Using ancient DNA, cloning and gene editing, scientists aim to create proxies of vanished species by modifying the genomes of living relatives. The most famous examples include the woolly mammoth, the thylacine or Tasmanian tiger and the dire wolf.

Leading much of this work are private biotechnology companies such as Colossal Biosciences and Revive & Restore.

Blix and Myhr found something surprising: the list of species targeted here is double of that of conservation of vulnerable species. That fact raises an unsettling possibility. Are we directing our technological imagination toward what is most ecologically urgent, or toward what is most enticing?

“It is often argued that the de-extinction projects will have a spillover effect on the conservation of species in terms of resources and attention to the issues of biodiversity decline, and raising faith in the idea that the technology can be useful,” says Blix. “Thus far, reading strictly from the spread of resources and time put into conservation biotechnology, we must wait and see if that expectation can be fulfilled.”

De-extinction carries a strong narrative power. It promises redemption, wonder and the possibility of undoing historical wrongs. But it also risks turning conservation into theatre: a demonstration of technological prowess that may attract attention and investment while diverting resources from the harder, less glamorous work of protecting habitats and reducing the forces driving species to extinction today.

Who Gets to Design Nature?

Conservation biotechnology is notable not only for what it attempts, but for who is leading it. Many projects are funded by private investors and pursued by interdisciplinary teams that include molecular biologists, entrepreneurs and engineers alongside conservation scientists.

This can bring innovation and substantial financial resources to an underfunded field.

But it also raises questions about transparency, accountability and power. Who decides which species are worth redesigning? Who assesses long-term ecological consequences? And whose vision of nature guides these interventions?

”We think it is necessary to be aware of and perhaps a bit worried about the fact that the majority of this research is privately funded,” says Blix. “Private funding is not negative per se, and often big changes comes from private initiative. But it might impact the level of transparency and research quality that governmental funding tends to ensure. These biotechnology conservation activities should also be coordinated with governmental nature conservation planning.”

The Limits of Control

Gene editing is often described as precise, but this does not mean it is simple, accurate or error-free.

Many traits, such as disease resistance and heat tolerance, depend on interactions among numerous genes. Editing several genes simultaneously – a process known as multiplexed genome editing – remains scientifically challenging and may have unintended consequences.

There is also the risk that focusing on a few desirable traits could reduce broader genetic diversity, potentially weakening a species’ long-term resilience.

Even if the genetic changes work exactly as intended, ecosystems may respond in unexpected ways. Conservation biology has long emphasised humility in the face of ecological complexity. Conservation biotechnology tests whether that humility can survive our growing technical power.

A New Meaning of Conservation

The technologies emerging today do not fit neatly into familiar categories of preservation or restoration. They invite a deeper question: what, exactly, are we trying to conserve?

If conservation once meant protecting the autonomy of the natural world, these tools suggest a future in which survival/species persistence increasingly depends on human design.

Our main interest in this technology is that it is applied responsively and sustainably,” says Blix. This, she says, gives rise to certain preconditions.

“First, we need to know as much as possible before any release. Simulation, modelling and monitoring is key to be able to foresee the consequences of release and following up on it, and we need all hands-on deck to make sure the issues are assessed from different perspectives. Second, we need to make sure legislation is fit for regulating these new technologies and areas of application, in ways that protect humans, nature and animals long-term.“

“Finally, using these technologies for conservation runs the risk of making quick fixes to long-term problems that were not caused by genetics in the first place. Genome editing does not solve the issue of extensive land exploitation that pushes populations out of their habitats – we cannot genome-edit ourselves out of that.”

That, she says, leads to the question of what this does to our relationship(s) with nature, when we think we can edit everything back together: “We are running out of time trying to halt biodiversity decline, but are we putting resources into the right solutions that can really make the change?”

As the International Union for Conservation of Nature has argued, innovation should be encouraged, but subjected to careful scrutiny.

Scrutiny, however, cannot answer the most important question.

When we alter species so they can live in the world we have transformed, are we preserving nature – or creating a new kind of nature that depends on us? The answer will shape not only the future of conservation, but also our understanding of humanity’s place in the living world.

  • Torill Blix is a researcher in the Climate and Environment division of NORCE in Norway. She is an interdisciplinary researcher with a background in biotechnology, specialised in sustainability, ethics, and societal aspects of gene editing in animals.  
  • Ayms Mason is a sustainable food and agriculture specialist, working with A Bigger Conversation as a researcher and writer.