BRINGING BACK THE
TASMANIAN TIGER
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DURATION: 25’ 20”
POST-PRODUCTION SCRIPT PREPARED
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BRINGING
BACK THE
TASMANIAN
TIGER
TIMECODE |
DIALOGUE |
10:00:00 |
[intro music and images] |
10:00:05 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY:
Australia’s Thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger, is one of the most exotic
and mysterious creatures to have roamed the planet. |
10:00:12 |
ANDREW PASK: It’s an
incredibly amazing, beautiful marsupial that was brutally hunted by humans to
extinction. |
10:00:18 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: But now, a world first. |
10:00:20 |
ANDREW PASK: This will be
the, the foundation of bringing the Thylacine back. |
10:00:24 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: A team of Australian scientists in
collaboration with a US genetic engineering company are promising to
resurrect it. |
10:00:31 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: So
possibly in the next 5 years? |
10:00:34 |
BEN LAMM: I think that’s
a really good assessment. |
10:00:36 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: Their ultimate goal? To return it to its native environment. |
10:00:40 |
ANDREW PASK: It was the
only marsupial Apex predator. Bringing
that animal back would have incredible benefits for the ecosystem. |
10:00:47 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: But the $15m project is already sparking fierce
debate. |
10:00:52 |
KRIS HELGEN: So many
species in Australia are threatened with extinction. To spend a lot of money doing something
that is unfeasible is a missed opportunity. |
10:01:01 |
NICK MOONEY: If they
succeed it will be a freak show. The animals will be so valuable, there’s no
way you can let them free range. |
10:01:08 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: 101 East
travels to what was once Thylacine heartland and talks to the scientists and
their critics about the ambitious project to bring it back to life. GFX: 101 EAST BRINGING BACK THE TASMANIAN TIGER BY MARY ANN JOLLEY, DAVID BOYLE & MARK DOBBIN |
10:01:32 |
MARY
ANN JOLLEY: Australia’s spectacular
southern isle was once home to the iconic Thylacine. Having disappeared from Papua New Guinea
and the mainland around 2000 years ago, its fate in Tasmania was sealed by 19th
century British colonists. The island’s
top predator, shot to extinction. |
10:01:53 |
NICK MOONEY:
Yeah, they brought this European predator hysteria. Everything with big teeth or claws was non
grata. A very grim story. |
10:02:02 |
MARY
ANN JOLLEY: Biologist, conservationist
and arguably Tasmania’s leading Thylacine expert, Nick Mooney, is blunt about
his state’s shameful past. |
10:02:11 |
NICK MOONEY: As the colony
settled in and sheep arrived, a conflict started immediately. At one stage
there was a claim that more sheep were killed every year than were actually
sheep in Tasmania. It was just classic tabloid rubbish. So, the bounty was installed and that
really was the death knell of the Thylacine. GFX: £1 for every full-grown Native Tiger destroyed |
10:02:37 |
MARY ANNE JOLLEY: The Thylacine population was wiped out
within little more than a century after British colonists arrived. The last one is believed to have died here
at Beaumaris Zoo in Hobart in 1936.
It’s said to have died of neglect and exposure. Tragically, just a couple of months after
its death, the Thylacine was declared a protected species. This famous footage of what’s considered
the second last surviving Thylacine was taken soon after it was captured and
brought to the zoo. The haunting images have made the animal an icon of human
induced extinction, but it’s spirit lives on. |
10:03:21 |
GFX: Australian MOVIE MAGAZINE |
10:03:24 |
NEWSREADER:
Reports in recent weeks have revived hopes that a few of them still
survive out there somewhere in the remote mountain and forest areas. |
10:03:33 |
NICK MOONEY:
There’s been thousands of sighting reports. I’ve met many people who firmly believe
they’ve seen Thylacines. They’re absolutely convincing, but whether they did
or not is a completely different issue. |
10:03:46 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY:
Almost 50 years after the last one was thought to have died, Mooney
led a year long government search for the Thylacine
from this site. A fellow wildlife
officer had reported seeing one here. |
10:03:58 |
NICK MOONEY: He was sleeping in his Landcruiser, woke
up, flicked his spotlight round and bingo.
He said there’s this Thylacine standing only three or four metres away
from the vehicle. So, he had a chance
to have a really good look at it for several minutes he thought. When the animal disappeared, he had a look
for footprints but it was raining so nothing. |
10:04:19 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: Mooney’s
search also found nothing. |
10:04:22 |
NICK MOONEY:
It was someone very experienced and so you’ve got no chance of a
mistake, yeah. And so, he was either
right or he was lying. He hasn’t budged from his story one scrap since. |
10:04:32 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: Is it possible
that they lived longer than people… |
10:04:37 |
NICK MOONEY:
Oh absolutely. I think it’s the
most extraordinary bit of human arrogance to think we caught or killed the
last one. |
10:04:45 |
NEWSREADER: Sadly, the Tasmanian tiger has gone. This is the only film in existence of the
rare creature that couldn’t keep pace with man. |
10:04:57 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY:
Known colloquially as the Tasmanian Tiger or Tassie Tiger for short,
the Thylacine is indelibly etched in Tasmania’s identity – adorning number
plates and attracting tourists. Small
towns trading on it. |
10:05:12 |
MARY
ANN JOLLEY: In 1984 Mole Creek was the
site of the last official search for the Thylacine, but I’m on my way to meet
some locals who say they’ve seen it since then and believe it’s still out
there. |
10:05:29 |
MARY
ANNE JOLLEY: With a head of a dog, pouch of a kangaroo and stripes of a
tiger, the magic of the mysterious marsupial is not lost on local publican,
Doug Westbrook, who took over the hotel 14 years ago. |
10:05:42 |
DOUG
WESTBROOK: The second weekend we was here we had a
group of German backpackers come through and they were really keen on the
thylacine and I thought, wow they come all the way from Germany to Mole
Creek. And I thought, there’s
something in this. SUBTITLES:
The
second weekend we was here… we
had a group of German backpackers come through… and
they were really keen on the thylacine. And
I thought, wow… they
come all the way from Germany to Mole Creek.
And
I thought, there’s something in this. |
10:06:00 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: And like many of his patrons, he says… |
10:06:03 |
DAVID WESTBROOK: I believe I saw one,
yeah. My wife will say she definitely
saw it. SUBTITLES: I believe I saw one, yeah. My wife will say she definitely saw
it. |
10:06:09 |
JOE: I’ve had several
encounters. SUBTITLES: I’ve had several… encounters. |
10:06:12 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: For old
timers like Joe and Lexi, memories of the tiger haven’t faded. |
10:06:17 |
LEXI: Well, my father used to snare back in the
mountains and he used to often talk about the Tasmanian tigers. SUBTITLES:
Well,
my father used to snare back in the mountains… and
he used to often talk about the Tasmanian tigers. |
10:06:25 |
JOE:
I used to torment my mother. I’d say,
“Mum, there’s a Tasmanian tiger on the road”.
“Oh yes. Another one”. Well, this day I said, “There’s a Tasmanian
tiger on the road”. The closer I got,
the more I could see that it really was.
Although he was wet, you could still see the black stripes up him. SUBTITLES:
I
used to torment my mother. I’d
say, “Mum, there’s a Tasmanian tiger on the road”. “Oh
yes. Another one”. Well,
this day I said, “There’s a Tasmanian tiger on the road”. The
closer I got, the more I could see that it really was. Although
he was wet, you could still see the black stripes up him. |
10:06:46 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY:
A younger enthusiast says he’s not only seen one… |
10:06:49 |
LEIGH JONES: It just shot out of the bush, straight across in front
of us to the other side. SUBTITLES: It just shot out of the bush… straight across the road in front of us to the other side. |
10:06:54 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: But has video evidence. |
10:06:56 |
LEIGH
JONES: We put the camera where the tiger went in through the day time, and a
couple of nights later he come back out. You see it rise up there? SUBTITLES: We
put the camera where the tiger went in through the day time… and
a couple of nights later, he came back out. You
see it rise up there? |
10:07:05 |
MARY
ANN JOLLEY: Oh, that’s it? SUBTITLES: Oh,
that’s it? |
10:07:07 |
LEIGH
JONES: Yeah. SUBTITLES:
Yeah. |
10:07:08 |
MARY ANNE JOLLEY: Just there. Not this? SUBTITLES: Just there. Not this? |
10:07:09 |
LEIGH JONES: No, not that. There’s his tail. SUBTITLES: No, not that.
There’s his tail. |
10:07:12 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: But alas it’s hard to see
anything. Unfortunately… |
10:07:16 |
LEIGH JONES: We had the camera too high. SUBTITLES: We had the camera too high. |
10:07:20 |
MARY ANNE JOLLEY: Social media abounds with blurry
photographs and videos posted by tiger hunters, claiming to have captured
images of the elusive created. While
experts rebuff them, the true believers are not deterred. |
10:07:34 |
LEXI:
Yes, I’d say it probably is still around. SUBTITLES: Yes,
I’d say it probably is still around |
10:07:37 |
JOE:
Scientists don’t know everything, and I’m certain that they’re still … all me
mates condemn me for it, but I still reckon they’re out there. SUBTITLES: Scientists
don’t know everything. And
I’m certain that they’re still… All
me mates condemn me for it… But
I still reckon they’re out there. |
10:07:52 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: The Tassie Tiger has also bewitched Hollywood. GFX: THE HUNTER |
10:07:58 |
MARY ANN
JOLLEY: And hard headed media barons.
America’s Ted Turner offered a $100,000 dollar reward to anyone who
found one. And Australia’s Kerry
Packer upped the ante to more than a million dollars – all to no avail. But now an American genetic engineering
company is vowing to reverse the course of Thylacine history. GFX: THE
DE-EXTINCTION COMPANY MAMMOTH
STEPPE |
10:08:21 |
COLOSSAL
VIDEO: The vast mammoth steppe of the
Pleistocene era. |
10:08:25 |
MARY
ANN JOLLEY: In late 2021, Colossal
announced a project to attempt what humans have never done, bring back an
extinct animal. |
10:08:33 |
COLOSSAL
VIDEO: Woolly Mammoths now long
extinct once roamed these northern landscapes in large herds. |
10:08:39 |
MARY
ANN JOLLEY: Raising more than $75
million dollars on the back of a proposal to resurrect the Woolly Mammoth by
editing the genome of an Asian elephant to create its giant furry relative. |
10:08:50 |
COLOSSAL VIDEO:
Breakthrough genetic engineering technologies have made it possible to read,
edit and even write genomes. Colossal… |
10:08:58 |
MARY ANN
JOLLEY: The company’s catchphrase… |
10:08:59 |
GFX: COLOSSAL Restoring the past
for a better future |
10:09:03 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: Is
now being used to promote the de-extinction of Australia’s Thylacine. Colossal founder and CEO, Ben Lamm, is streaming in from Dallas, Texas. |
10:09:13 |
BEN
LAMM: The Thylacine was actually eradicated 100% by humankind and it served a
major purpose in its ecosystem. So, it’s kind of this perfect project where
we can you know undo what was done from the past. |
10:09:27 |
FOREST: Huge, huge
news coming out of Australia today. |
10:09:31 |
MARY ANN
JOLLEY: With the help of social media influencers. |
10:09:33 |
LAURA: Colossal are planning to de-extinct the
Thylacine. |
10:09:36 |
KENDALL LONG: To learn more, go to Colossal.com. |
10:09:39 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: Colossal secured more than $10 million
dollars. Its investors include a movie
megastar, media celebrities, private conservation companies and US
intelligence agency, the CIA. |
10:09:51 |
BEN
LAMM: I think that, you know, the
Federal Government you know wants to understand what the capabilities are
around these technologies. Where do we need to put boundaries around these
technologies? And then how can these technologies
really help the world, right? |
10:10:05 |
MARY
ANN JOLLEY: To really understand this ambitious project, you need to meet
this man, Andrew Pask, a professor in the
bioscience department at Australia’s University of Melbourne who’s been
studying Thylacine development for 20 years.
He leads a team of scientists collaborating with Colossal. |
10:10:22 |
ANDREW PASK:
I think there is nothing that approaches the, the, the incredibleness
of the Tasmanian tiger. It was the
only marsupial apex predator that has lived into modern times. And so, I got really fascinated in trying
to figure out, you now, this is tragically lost this species but quite recently
and could we use museum specimens to unlock more about the biology of this
incredible animal? We know that DNA
breaks down overtime, so for example there is no DNA left in dinosaur bones. So, the first thing we’re just trying to
figure out, is there DNA in those specimens? |
10:10:54 |
MARY
ANN JOLLEY: Melbourne’s Museum was his
first stop. It holds one of the world’s best collections of Thylacines. If it wasn’t for the backroom collections
in museums, the Thylacine de-extinction project would have be
inconceivable. On the shelves and in
draws here, are precious Thylacine specimens from which Pask
and his team have been able to extract DNA. |
10:11:20 |
KEVIN
ROWE: They said give us a sample of every Thylacine and we said hold on a
minute, why don’t we figure out which parts work the best? Everyone of the
cells in here has DNA. It’s just a
question of how degraded that DNA is. |
10:11:31 |
MARY
ANN JOLLEY: Kevin Rowe is the curator
of mammals at the museum and is working closely with Pask.
|
10:11:36 |
KEVIN ROWE: So, these are
the two that we started with sampling different places. This specimen we
sampled in a few ways because we’re working to try to optimise the best
sources of DNA on the skin. |
10:11:46 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: But it’s this baby Thylacine specimen that
has proved the most valuable. |
10:11:52 |
KEVIN ROWE: Here it is. |
10:11:53 |
ANDREW PASK:
Yep, this is my favourite specimen of all of the ones that we have
here. |
10:11:57 |
MARY
ANN JOLLEY: More than 110 years old, it was preserved decades before the
value of DNA was fully understood. |
10:12:03 |
ANDREW PASK: It was put into
ethanol, which was quite amazingly fortuitous. What that did is it enabled it to preserve
the DNA within that specimen really well and so it’s actually the one that
enabled us to sequence the entire genome and will be the foundation of
bringing the Thylacine back. |
10:12:20 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: But that’s just the beginning.
How to turn the genome into a living creature is another thing. In 2008, Pask’s
team had a major breakthrough. In a
world first, they succeeded in bringing DNA from an extinct species back to
life by inserting a Thylacine fragment into a mouse. |
10:12:39 |
ANDREW PASK: We brought back a gene we thought was
really important for skeletal development, for the shape and overall size of
the Thylacine. And we can tag the gene
blue. So everywhere you see blue here,
is where you’re seeing that piece of Thylacine DNA, our Tassie tiger DNA,
resurrected and actually functioning in that living animal. |
10:13:01 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY:
Now they face a herculean challenge, bringing back the whole genome of an
extinct Thylacine. And that’s where
this tiny marsupial known as the Fat Tailed Dunnart comes into play. |
10:13:13 |
ANDREW
PASK: It’s amazing to think a little
marsupial like this could give birth to a Tasmanian tiger. |
10:13:18 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: The Dunnart is the Thylacine’s closest
living relative. They intend to edit its genome to create a Thylacine. |
10:13:25 |
ANDREW PASK:
They’re mostly the same. You
know, we’re talking 95% plus similarity between those two genomes, but there’s
5% of difference. So, what we do is we
go in and we edit that 5%. |
10:13:37 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: Stem cells will be sourced from the
Dunnart, then edited by Colossal to match the genome of the Thylacine. |
10:13:38 |
GFX: DUNNART THYLACINE |
10:13:44 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: The nucleus of a
Dunnart egg will be replaced with the nucleus of the engineered stem cell.
The resulting embryo will then be implanted into its host. |
10:13:48 |
GFX: NEW
DNA INTO CELL EMBRYO
IMPLANTED |
10:13:56 |
ANDREW
PASK: One of the great things about marsupials
is they all give birth to tiny, tiny babies. They’re about the size of a
grain of rice. What that means for us is that even that little mouse sized,
fat tailed Dunnart, can give birth to a baby Tasmanian tiger, even though
it’s going to massively outgrow the mum after birth. |
10:14:15 |
MARY
ANN JOLLEY: These CT scans of rare
baby Thylacine specimens will then become critical. |
10:14:20 |
ANDREW
PASK: We can actually map out their
developmental trajectory to make sure that that final animal we get is going
to be developing correctly along those pathways. |
10:14:29 |
MARY
ANN JOLLEY: And if it’s not? |
10:14:30 |
ANDREW
PASK: Then we would know that we’re not recreating the Thylacine so we can
stop those experiments, go back, have a look at what other bit we can change
and then create the next one and have a look at how that one’s developing. |
10:14:40 |
MARY
ANN JOLLEY: So really, until it’s
born, you won’t know what you’re going to get? |
10:14:43 |
ANDREW
PASK: The whole goal with this project
is to edit that genome to be 99.9% Thylacine, but we don’t how big a
difference that 0.1% might make, but it will definitely be a Thylacine. |
10:14:56 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY:
And definitely have stripes? |
10:14:58 |
ANDREW PASK:
I hope so. I feel like we’ve
failed if it’s not stripey. |
10:15:03 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: According to Pask, it
will be at least 10 years before a genetically engineering Thylacine cell is
produced. But Colossal’s
CEO is much less circumspect. |
10:15:13 |
BEN
LAMM: We’ve put a very big ambitious goal out there for the mammoth of you
know 5 to 6 years and elephants have a 22-month gestation. Given that our, our model organism, the fat
tailed Dunnart has a 14-day gestation which is obviously significantly
shorter. I think that it’s safe to assume that we will hopefully see one
before we see a mammoth – that kind of gives you some idea of time. |
10:15:35 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: So possibly in the next five years? |
10:15:37 |
BEN LAMM: I think that’s a really good assessment. |
10:15:41 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: But at
Sydney’s Australian Museum, the assessment of the Thylacine de-extinction
project is far from good. |
10:15:47 |
KRIS HELGEN: The project is fanciful. I guarantee you that in 10 year’s from now that animal will not be running around
Tasmania. This is not going to happen.
|
10:15:57 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: Kris Helgen is the museum’s chief scientist. He finds the use
of the Dunnart farcical. |
10:16:03 |
KRIS HELGEN: Does that
look anything like a Thylacine to you? |
10:16:05 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: And not just because of the way it looks. |
10:16:08 |
KRIS HELGEN: It’s not closely related to the Thylacine. It’s about as close as you can get amongst
modern species, but the Thylacine is so different from all other marsupials
that it’s in its own family. The question is, could you ever modify the DNA
of this animal to get it anything close to becoming this animal? I say absolutely not. It would be something
a bit like a dog to a cat, like a horse to a rhino. Could you possibly turn an elephant into a
mammoth? Maybe it’s just possible
because they’re so closely related, and we know a lot about the biology of
elephants so we have something to go on. With Thylacines, we’re missing all
of that ground information. |
10:16:52 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: And Helgen contends that even if something is produced, it
won’t be a Thylacine. |
10:16:57 |
KRIS HELGEN: The outcome will be some kind of genetically
modified Dunnart. That’s not a Thylacine. |
10:17:03 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: It’s a pronouncement that doesn’t appear to
worry Colossal’s CEO. |
10:17:07 |
BEN LAMM: We like to think of it as a proxy species, right? We’re not cloning these animals. So, what
percentage of it is a Thylacine versus non-Thylacine, is still to be
determined. Like once we get our first
couple of Thylacines, we’ll let the world judge and say you know, can my
grandmother look at it and say, wow, it’s a Thylacine. But how close genetically do we really
need, right? And so ultimately, we want to ensure that we are developing an
animal that can serve as a proxy to that degraded ecosystem. |
10:17:34 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: Australia’s degraded eco systems are in
crisis. Catastrophic bushfires,
droughts and massive habitat destruction have had a devastating impact. More species of mammals have been lost than
on any other continent and the country has one of the highest rates of
species decline in the world. |
10:17:53 |
ANDREW PASK: They Thylacine was absolutely critical in balancing
the ecosystem from, from which it came and so a great example of what happens
when you lose that predator, is with the Tasmanian devils. |
10:18:05 |
MARY
ANN JOLLEY: Another native Australian marsupial, the Tasmanian devil, has
long been a signature species for animals on the brink of extinction. A
contagious and deadly facial tumour wiping out some 80% of the population. |
10:18:19 |
ANDREW PASK: Now if the
Tasmanian tiger was still around, it eats those sick and injured animals and
it removes them from the population before they have a chance to spread that
disease. So, we think that bringing that
animal back to Tasmania would have incredible benefits, not just for the
Tasmanian devil population, but for all sorts of unforeseen parts of that
ecosystem. |
10:18:41 |
MARY
ANN JOLLEY: It’s a vision that realistically won’t be tested here in Tasmania
for decades, only after Thylacine proxies are studied thoroughly and deemed
safe to release into the wild. About 5,000 Thylacines once roamed across
Tasmania, but conservationists say that bring them back is unlikely to
restore the environmental imbalance left in the wake of their demise. |
10:19:06 |
NICK MOONEY: I think it’s
a false premise and I think it’s, I’ll be generous and say I think it’s
naïve. |
10:19:12 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: Nick
Mooney has spent his life in the Tasmanian wilderness, working for the
government’s parks and wildlife Service. |
10:19:18 |
NICK MOONEY: By the time this has happened, we’ll have so many
more extinctions and there’ll be fractions of habitat left and the very best
of it that the Thylacine would have preferred to live in will be well and
truly under lock and key, fenced and pastured and all the rest of it. Some of it cemented. |
10:19:38 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: And as for benefits for the devil he’s worked
to preserve… |
10:19:41 |
NICK MOONEY: They become
very rare. What do you do? Put Thylacines back in there and suppress
them further? And in fact, the disease
process is well underway and there’s no way you can roll it back. It’s got
its own momentum if you like and there’s just so many moving parts in this
machine now that people are influencing, like roadkill and development of all
sorts, pesticides and then climate change. |
10:20:05 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: The north west of the island was once prime
Thylacine habitat, but today one of the last populations of Tasmanian devils
not affected by the lethal facial tumour, struggles to survive here. Local wildlife volunteer, Alice Carson,
shares photographs of devil roadkill. |
10:20:23 |
ALICE CARSON: You see this is a big guy. |
10:20:24 |
NICK MOONEY: Big old
devil in its prime. |
10:20:25 |
ALICE CARSON: Yep. |
10:20:27 |
NICK MOONEY: Big scarred
face. |
10:20:28 |
ALICE CARSON: Look at
that poor darling. |
10:20:29 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: Carson
says she’s removed more than 160 carcasses of endangered devils from this
stretch of road in the past 18 months. |
10:20:37 |
ALICE CARSON: We haven’t got room for the animals we’ve got now.
We’re not prepared to share what we’ve got now. So, I, I, it’s not because I don’t want
Thylacines back in the wild, I’d love to see that, but I’d love to see what
we’ve got here protected as well. |
10:20:50 |
NICK MOONEY: It makes me
think a very expensive lab animal might be just splattered on the road here
shortly after you release it. To have
a Thylacine rebalance the ecology, it actually has to be there in a lot of
numbers throughout the landscape, free ranging. If they succeed, it will be a freak show
because the animals will be so valuable, there’s no way you can let them free
range because anything can happen to them and people won’t put up with them.
You’ll, you’ll still have an animal that people will be worried about their
sheep. |
10:21:29 |
NICK MOONEY: We’re here on the corner of the old Van Diemen’s
land grant. They put a lot of sheep on here and they actually employed a
Thylacine hunter to try and track down the Thylacines and kill them. |
10:21:41 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: The extermination of Thylacines hangs heavily
in the air. For Mooney it’s a sobering reminder of what should never be
allowed to happen again. |
10:21:50 |
NICK MOONEY: I think we should be preventing extinctions not
trying to resurrect animals or in fact invent animals. If we focus on this
effort to reconstruct an animal, we’re going to teach people that extinction
isn’t forever and we can fix everything later so let’s not worry. |
10:22:08 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: Let the
devil’s die. |
10:22:10 |
NICK MOONEY: Let them die. This project I think is a very
serious distraction for genuine nature conservation. |
10:22:17 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: And it’s the diversion of investors’ funds that
concerns the Australian Museum’s chief scientist. |
10:22:22 |
KRIS HELGEN: To spend a lot of money doing something that I
think is not just infeasible but impossible is a missed opportunity, I think.
If you really wanted to show that de-extinction was possible, you would
probably be starting with animals that were much less charismatic. So, Australia’s extinct native rodents, or
maybe extinct native bandicoots. These are some animals that have very close
living relatives and you might have an actual shot at achieving
something. But they wouldn’t be the
charismatic ones that would bring in those tens of millions of dollars of
investment. |
10:22:57 |
BEN LAMM: I think that any time you’re pushing the bounds of
technology and doing something bold, you know you’re going to have critics,
right? You know, what I will tell you
is that the world that we live in needs bold solutions. We need genetic rescue tools in order for
us to save critically endangered species that exist on, on the planet. |
10:23:18 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: 250 kms west of Melbourne, Grampians National
Park is home to endangered species.
Museum Victoria’s Kevin Rowe and his team are working to ensure
they’ll reap the benefits from advances in genetic technology. |
10:23:33 |
KEVIN ROWE: We’ve got a smoky mouse. |
10:23:35 |
HELPER: A smoky mouse? |
10:23:37 |
KEVIN ROWE: It’s a smoky
mouse in here, yeah. Right in the
rocks. |
10:23:38 |
HELPER: A smoky mouse? Oh,
that’s awesome. The first one for the
day. |
10:23:41 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: They’re collecting tissue from animals like the
threatened smoky mouse. |
10:23:46 |
KEVIN ROWE: So, we’re hoping this guy is now breeding, but in
cases he doesn’t, we’ve got his genetic diversity preserved as cells for the
next 100 to 200 years. |
10:23:56 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: Tissue samples containing living DNA are
preserved in the museum’s biobank at a temperature of less than minus 180
degrees Celsius. Using the preserved DNA, the Thylacine project is promising
solutions for the more than 30 Australian marsupials under threat of
extinction. |
10:24:16 |
ANDREW PASK: The reason I love this project is because
regardless of the endpoint, the conservation technologies that we develop,
are going to be transformative for marsupials. We’ll have mechanisms of turning biobank’s
marsupial tissue back into marsupials that we can repopulate areas after a
bushfire. We want to bolster their
immune system so they can survive diseases better, maybe survive climate
change better, maybe able to deal with predators in the environment
better. They are things that we
absolutely will unequivocally be able to achieve through this project, as
well as bringing the Thylacine back. |
10:24:51 |
MARY ANN JOLLEY: Spin off
technologies may prove to be the project’s greatest achievement, but back in
Mole Creek, at least one Thylacine lover is barracking for its resurrection. |
10:25:01 |
LEXI: Whether it be one out of the wild or whether it’s out of a
laboratory, that’d be good to see one, wouldn’t it? And then we’d all know what they were
talking about. SUBTITLES: Whether it be one out of the wild or whether it’s out of a laboratory… that’d be good, to see one, wouldn’t it? And then we’d all know what they were talking about |
10:25:15 |
[closing music and images] |
10:25:16 |
GFX: [ALJAZEERA logo] aljazeera.com |
10:25:19 |
[end] |