A Texas biotechnology and genetic engineering company that’s using cutting-edge science to de-extinct the dodo and Tasmanian tiger wants to use woolly mammoths to help build better bison on the Wind River Indian Reservation in Wyoming.
Colossal Biosciences is the same outfit that’s theorized about making it possible to someday introduce woolly mammoths in Yellowstone National Park.
Its latest initiative builds on one of the greatest conservation comebacks in the history of the United States. Instead of bringing an extinct animal back to life, the company aspires to improve upon North America's most iconic animal species — the American bison.
The Colossal Indigenous Council is a new partnership between Colossal and several American Indian tribes, including the Eastern Shoshone and Arapaho on the Wind River Reservation in central Wyoming, focusing on a stronger future for bison.
"We realized that we needed to bring several tribal groups together and build this council to be our steward," Colossal CEO Ben Lamm told Cowboy State Daily. "They'll give us ecological, cultural and spiritual feedback to the work that we're going to be doing in North America and its impact for them."
Lamm said the same science that Colossal is developing to resurrect the woolly mammoth by 2028 will be used to explore the vast genetic lineage of bison. Millions of dollars and the latest in bioengineering technology will find new treatments for disease and possibly restore genetic diversity of the species lost over the last millennium.
"Bison are our national mammal," Lamm said. "They are admired as a symbol of American resiliency. Deploying our de-extinction toolkit to support the conservation and restoration of that species is huge."
What Was Is Lost
Bison have been described as America's last great megafauna. The massive mammals are all that's left of North America's Ice Age biodiversity that included mammoths, mastodons and ground sloths.
Over the last 500 years, primarily the 19th century, bison went from roaming the American West by the millions to being slaughtered to near extinction. Their disappearance from most of the native range had profound ecological and cultural impacts.
"When Columbus first stepped foot in North America, there were roughly 30 million bison," said Stefano Daza Arango, Colossal's manager of conservation partnerships. "Today, there's less than 1% of that historic number, and the genetic diversity of that species dwindled significantly."
These were among the statistics that stunned the Colossal team.
Arango said the company quickly realized that the success of its de-extinction efforts for animals like the woolly mammoth could benefit immensely from addressing the impacts of the near extinction of the “woolly cow."
"We might not have woolly elephants yet, but we have woolly cows, and that's the closest thing to a mammoth today," he said. "There are a lot of things that we can learn from the impacts of bison since we're looking at holistic ecosystems — not just ecosystems with mammoths, but what other keystone species lived alongside the mammoth, and bison were a significant part of that."
"We don't have mammoths yet," Lamm said. "But as we get toward mammoths, and as we get to other species here in the United States, we want to look at how that applies to working with bison and other animals that are culturally and ecologically important to the United States."
Colossal is planning an ambitious project to explore and restore the bison's former grandeur. But they needed partners, so they turned to the original stewards of the bison's legacy.
Where The Buffalo Roam
Jason Baldes is a member of the Eastern Shoshone Tribe on the Wind River Reservation. He is the founder of the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative and one of the first members of the Colossal Indigenous Council.
"We formed the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative to help facilitate habitat acquisition and land use change," he said. “But also to facilitate the cultural, educational, academic and nutritional reconnection of our youth and community to buffalo."
The initiative started with the arrival of 10 conservation bison, released on the reservation. Baldes now manages and monitors over 200 bison between the Eastern Shoshone and Arapaho tribes, with plans to acquire more land to expand the herd’s range and numbers.
Baldes believes in the earnest potential of Colossal's bison restoration initiatives. It gave him a unique opportunity to get more resources and scientific muscle into his work.
"The cutting-edge technology and science behind Colossal is applicable to help us understand how to manage some of today's conservation challenges," he said. "This species was systematically eradicated but can be restored to some of the important roles as ecosystem engineers and a keystone species."
The Colossal Indigenous Council is still in the early stages of development, what Baldes described as a "piecemeal process" with "a lot of potential."
He believes Colossal's support and enthusiasm will help the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative navigate the cultural and political hurdles related to bison conservation.
"There are political and social challenges we can address or help to mitigate through our partnership," he said. "This could help guide the management, restore some of the biodiversity and the carbon storage, and help us move forward in a good way by building our bison populations while understanding the implications, and having the data and the science to back it up."
Getting The Shots
Colossal has explored a broad range of possibilities for its bison initiative.
With input from the Indigenous Council, the company is developing a timeline for several projects stemming from the same de-extinction research used to restore the woolly mammoth and the dodo.
"We are super stoked about bison right now," Lamm said. "Prioritizing bison as a component of our conservation efforts is important."
In June, an Asian elephant at the Houston Zoo was the first to receive an mRNA vaccine for elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus, a deadly virus that plagues elephants in captivity worldwide. Colossal partially developed the vaccine, lending financial and scientific support to the research.
Baldes believes Colossal could apply the same technologies to address diseases and viruses afflicting bison. Vaccines to counter brucellosis and other afflictions could enormously benefit the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiatives and bison populations across the U.S.
"There are many issues around disease that have really affected the management of bison, particularly around Yellowstone National Park," he said. “We want to mitigate some of these issues with disease and management, which ensures we have healthy animals available to build our tribal programs."
Back To The Future
Beyond present-day diseases, there's also the possibility of reviving the long-lost genetic diversity of bison. Lamm described the "moment of serendipity" that sparked the excitement for bison conservation in the Colossal team.
"Beth Shapiro, our chief science officer, has done lots of research on bison genetics that is hundreds of years old," he said. "Our tribal partners were telling us about the importance of bison culturally and ecologically, so we brought Beth on, who has an incredible background of studying, understanding, and publishing papers about bison genetics. It was the perfect moment."
Earlier this year, Colossal announced it had generated the first induced pluripotent stem cells for a woolly mammoth. That bioengineering breakthrough, Colossal said, will allow scientists to create all the tissues and cells needed to build a living woolly mammoth.
Colossal is also using its technology to explore the genetic lineage of the Northern white rhino in Africa, another living species that's lost much of its genetic diversity due to population decline.
"We're using that technology to find lost samples we can engineer into today's genetic diversity," he said. "That applies directly to bison. We can look at the population genomics in everything from living animals to old museum samples and find some genetic diversity that has been lost to time. That old genetic diversity can be engineered into select breeds of living bison."
Lamm emphasized that the blueprints for recovering the bison's genetic diversity are already being successfully used in the company’s other de-extinction initiatives and is yielding promising results. With the depth of available research on bison genetics, those blueprints can be applied and could yield spectacular results.
"It will take several years for us to get to the point that we can start to do that with bison," he said, "but that's our long-term goal, and early indications are really positive."
Born And Bred To Be Wild
Colossal's real-world mission to use genetic research to prevent and seemingly defy extinction has drawn several comparisons to the fictional Jurassic Park. However, Colossal aspires to augment living ecosystems rather than fill a theme park.
"I do think that most people probably associate us with the mammoth," Lamm said, "but we are a species preservation company with de-extinction projects, and we care equally about all of our projects. We think not just about species preservation but also about the rewilding of extinct species and understanding the cultural and ecological impacts."
While returning mammoths to the wild will be an immense undertaking in many realms of modern civilization, it should be much easier for Colossal's genetic breakthroughs to be "rewilded" into bison populations. That's another important frontier being explored through the Indigenous Council.
Colossal has similar councils in Tasmania and Mauritius, laying the groundwork for the eventual rewilding of the Tasmanian tiger, a carnivorous marsupial that went extinct in 1936, and the iconic dodo. Lamm said the only way to restore these species successfully is by listening to the people with the strongest cultural ties to their existence.
"We're not there to persuade, we're there to educate people on what we're doing," he said. "We can't know everything. So, we need to listen and get feedback, not just on the ecological side, but also the cultural and spiritual aspects of it. We can't do that if we don't go to those places, put boots on the ground, and listen."
Baldes said his work with the Wind River Tribal Buffalo Initiative will provide the living laboratory for Colossal's bison genetics initiative. The Wind River Reservation's conservation successes will complement Colossal's scientific milestones.
"A lot of the work involves bringing in partners that want to see big changes for bison conservation on tribal and public lands," Baldes said. "We've fought to protect land, water, and wildlife for a long time and have a long history of conservation successes on the Wind River Reservation. Restoring buffalo and protecting them in this way falls right in line with that history."
Forging The Future
The Colossal team is planning to a visit to the Wind River Reservation in early August. Baldes is set to meet folks from the company and show them the bison thriving through the Wind River Tribal Bison Initiative.
While in Wyoming, Colossal representatives plan to discuss the future of the Colossal Indigenous Council and what the company can do to assist its tribal partners in their goals.
"The Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is one of the last intact landscapes where animals can exist the way they once did," Baldes said. “Colossal supports the big picture. This is an opportunity to use more data and technology to justify the indigenous philosophy behind the protection of our foods, tools, and medicines, along with the plants, animals, and their habitat. Our philosophical values align. That's why it's such a great opportunity to continue to work together."
"There are papers published about keystone species with some of the highest potential impact on carbon sequestration and active system restoration," Lamm said. "Bison are on every one of those lists. That was the writing on the wall for us, and prioritizing bison, because of their importance from an ecological restoration perspective, is really important to us."
Lamm believes the Colossal Indigenous Council will guide the biotech company as it strives toward its goal to save the future by resurrecting the past. The bison's conservation success started with the last intact population in Yellowstone National Park, but the next chapter might be roaming the Wind River Reservation in the not-too-distant future.
"The buffalo story is not just a Native American story; it's an American story," Baldes said. “The more we understand the history of buffalo, the more we understand why it's important to restore them, not just because of the implications of this keystone species on the landscape but for the connection to the people."
Andrew Rossi can be reached at arossi@cowboystatedaily.com.
