For the Birds: Colossal Biosciences Bringing the Dodo Back to Mauritius
Despite being gone for over 300 years, the dodo is still among the world’s most iconic extinct species, remaining a symbol of Mauritian national pride to this day. Prior to the Dutch colonization of the island in the 1600s, an uninhabited Mauritius was a haven for the flightless fowl, which faced no natural predators and grew plumper than a turkey off the abundant native fruit. Today, centuries after the dodo was hunted to extinction, the genetic engineering and biotechnology company Colossal Biosciences has devised a plan to reintroduce the bird to Mauritius.
Earlier this year, Colossal announced that it had raised $150 million to launch the Avian Genomics Group arm of the company, a branch dedicated to the de-extinction of the dodo. This project leverages the company’s gene-editing expertise to alter the cells of a Nicobar pigeon — the dodo’s closest living relative — in the creation of a primordial germ cell with characteristics of a dodo bird. This primordial germ cell acts as a precursor to an egg and sperm and can be inserted into the gonads of a surrogate chicken to birth a hybrid species functionally equivalent to a dodo. While the company has not released a timeline for this project, a recent partnership with the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation has brought it one step closer to its rewilding goals.
The Understated Importance of Avians: A Tale From Mauritius
With the Cornell Lab of Ornithology reporting that approximately 48% of bird species around the world are facing declines, embracing innovative conservation methods like rewilding and de-extinction may be the only way to save our skies and our landscapes.
While their work often goes unrecognized, birds are largely responsible for our everyday landscapes as their fruit and seed-heavy diet aids seed dispersal, promoting plant growth. With studies showing that over 70% of flowering plants depend on birds for dispersal, a worldwide loss of bird species could dramatically alter our landscapes.
Perhaps nowhere in the world understands this better than the isolated island nation of Mauritius, where the loss of the dodo has never gone unnoticed. The island is located in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Africa, with over 100 miles of open ocean standing between Mauritius and its closest neighbor, the island of Réunion. This makes it nearly impossible for birds to travel to and from the island. While Mauritius is still home to over 100 bird species, none have a diet or size comparable to the 3-foot-tall, 40-pound dodo.
This has left the island in a unique situation, as nearly a third of native fruit plants are no longer being dispersed, many due to being too big for the current bird population to swallow. According to a study published in Nature Communications, the loss of the dodo over 300 years ago has done irreparable damage to Mauritius, as 203 fruit-feeding interactions have been lost due to the island's frugivore population being half as big as it was when the dodo roamed.
Today, it’s estimated that just 4.4% of Mauritius’ original landscape remains, with the endangered Mauritian flying fox now responsible for 90% of all seed dispersal on the island.
With 57% of the island’s tree species facing extinction, the country faces an urgent need to restore its native ecosystem and has turned to Colossal Biosciences’ dodo project for support.
Colossal’s Mauritanian Partnership: Reviving Two Birds With One Stone
In light of a recent partnership with the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation — a nonprofit conservation organization that works closely with the Mauritanian government — Colossal Biosciences is close to cementing a habitat for the dodo in Mauritius and has expanded its conservation efforts on the island.
For the people of Mauritius, a nation that considers the dodo a source of pride, this partnership is highly symbolic. “The dodo, a bird intimately woven in the DNA of Mauritius, is also sadly iconic for the role mankind played in its extinction. It also symbolizes efforts to prevent species extinctions,” said Vikash Tatayah, director of conservation at the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation. “We are so grateful for Colossal’s technologies and the promise to return this iconic species, extinct since the 1680s, to its native environment.”
As Colossal continues to work on its innovative avian reproduction de-extinction methods to revive the dodo, the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation will begin rewilding the dodo’s native habitat and developing ecosystem management strategies to provide the species with the best chances of continued survival.
“Our goal with all the species we work on is to bring them back into their natural habitat,” said Ben Lamm, Colossal CEO and co-founder, in a recent press release. “This endorsement and collaboration from the Mauritian Wildlife is a big testament to the incredible work that not only our scientific teams are doing to bring back the dodo but the team to successfully wild them back into their natural habitats."
In addition to rewilding the dodo, the partnership between Colossal and the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation will work to rejuvenate another endangered bird species iconic to the island, the pink pigeon. Known for its pastel plumage, the pink pigeon is the island’s last remaining native pigeon species and once flocked on Mauritius by the thousands.
While the bird’s toxic flesh provided it unique immunity from hunting that plagued other species like the dodo, Mauritius’ isolation led to the pink pigeon becoming inbred over time, causing half the chicks born on the island to die from a parasite affecting their ability to swallow. Now, the species is down to its last 500 individuals and is expected to go extinct in 50 to 100 years without intervention.
With Colossal’s new plan to genetically rescue the species, the pink pigeon’s future is already looking brighter. Using historical samples of the pink pigeon's DNA, the company plans to leverage its gene-editing expertise to reintroduce biodiversity into the species, improving its immunity to disease and reducing the negative impacts of inbreeding.
As the dodo and pink pigeon both belong to the Columbidae (pigeon) family, Lamm expects these conservation projects to uniquely inform one another. “The dodo is going to help the pink pigeon,” he said. “As we develop these Colossal de-extinction programs, we’re identifying species that would benefit directly from those technologies. All the technologies that we're going to develop around the dodo have become tools that we can start to apply to the pink pigeon and other pigeon conservation projects."
As Mauritius remains one of the world’s countries most vulnerable to extinction and climate change, any effort toward rewilding, no matter how audacious, is a step toward safeguarding precious biodiversity. Colossal Biosciences and the Mauritian Wildlife Foundation aim to prove that with two famed bird species.