Polar bears, Florida panthers, red wolves, California condors and a dragonfly most people couldn't pick out of a lineup are about to have something in common: a backup copy.
Colossal Biosciences, the Dallas-based de-extinction company best known for its work on the woolly mammoth, dodo and dire wolf — and backed by investors including George R.R. Martin and filmmaker Peter Jackson — announced Thursday that it is partnering with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to create a BioVault for every species protected under the Endangered Species Act.
Think Noah's Ark, but extremely 2026. "We're not loading two of every animal onto a boat," CEO and co-founder Ben Lamm told Reuters. Instead, the project will collect and cryopreserve living cells, reproductive tissue and genomic DNA from roughly 2,300 threatened and endangered animals and plants.
The material will be stored in liquid nitrogen at Colossal's Dallas headquarters and other locations, while the genomic data generated through the project is expected to be made available to scientists, conservationists and wildlife managers through open-access repositories.
That matters because this isn’t just a sci-fi freezer full of animal samples. "The materials support assisted reproduction, genetic management of wild populations and future restoration if a species is lost entirely," Lamm explained. "For the first time, we have the technology to make that possible at scale."
The timing is hard to ignore. The BioVault arrives as the Endangered Species Act is back in the political crosshairs, with the Trump administration proposing changes that environmental groups say would weaken the law credited with keeping 99% of listed species from extinction. A federal court struck down several earlier ESA rollbacks in March, but the fight over how far those protections should go is clearly not over.
Still, the story isn’t all doom. The ESA has helped bring species like the bald eagle and peregrine falcon back from the brink, and the Florida manatee has improved enough to move from endangered to threatened.
