0:00:00.950,0:00:06.012 Now, extinction is a different kind of death. 0:00:06.012,0:00:08.635 It's bigger. 0:00:08.635,0:00:11.715 We didn't really realize that until 1914, 0:00:11.715,0:00:14.930 when the last passenger pigeon, a female named Martha, 0:00:14.930,0:00:17.948 died at the Cincinnati zoo. 0:00:17.948,0:00:21.489 This had been the most abundant bird in the world 0:00:21.489,0:00:25.096 that'd been in North America for six million years. 0:00:25.096,0:00:28.401 Suddenly it wasn't here at all. 0:00:28.401,0:00:32.478 Flocks that were a mile wide and 400 miles long 0:00:32.478,0:00:35.125 used to darken the sun. 0:00:35.125,0:00:38.195 Aldo Leopold said this was a biological storm, 0:00:38.195,0:00:41.000 a feathered tempest. 0:00:41.000,0:00:43.444 And indeed it was a keystone species 0:00:43.444,0:00:47.460 that enriched the entire eastern deciduous forest, 0:00:47.460,0:00:49.744 from the Mississippi to the Atlantic, 0:00:49.744,0:00:53.059 from Canada down to the Gulf. 0:00:53.059,0:00:56.372 But it went from five billion birds to zero in just a couple decades. 0:00:56.372,0:00:57.572 What happened? 0:00:57.572,0:00:59.725 Well, commercial hunting happened. 0:00:59.725,0:01:03.684 These birds were hunted for meat that was sold by the ton, 0:01:03.684,0:01:06.004 and it was easy to do because when those big flocks 0:01:06.004,0:01:08.276 came down to the ground, they were so dense 0:01:08.276,0:01:10.644 that hundreds of hunters and netters could show up 0:01:10.644,0:01:13.650 and slaughter them by the tens of thousands. 0:01:13.650,0:01:16.668 It was the cheapest source of protein in America. 0:01:16.668,0:01:18.643 By the end of the century, there was nothing left 0:01:18.643,0:01:23.483 but these beautiful skins in museum specimen drawers. 0:01:23.483,0:01:25.358 There's an upside to the story. 0:01:25.358,0:01:27.272 This made people realize that the same thing 0:01:27.272,0:01:29.764 was about to happen to the American bison, 0:01:29.764,0:01:33.169 and so these birds saved the buffalos. 0:01:33.169,0:01:34.843 But a lot of other animals weren't saved. 0:01:34.843,0:01:39.634 The Carolina parakeet was a parrot that lit up backyards everywhere. 0:01:39.634,0:01:41.980 It was hunted to death for its feathers. 0:01:41.980,0:01:45.082 There was a bird that people liked on the East Coast called the heath hen. 0:01:45.082,0:01:48.091 It was loved. They tried to protect it. It died anyway. 0:01:48.091,0:01:51.465 A local newspaper spelled out, "There is no survivor, 0:01:51.465,0:01:56.282 there is no future, there is no life to be recreated in this form ever again." 0:01:56.282,0:01:58.953 There's a sense of deep tragedy that goes with these things, 0:01:58.953,0:02:01.378 and it happened to lots of birds that people loved. 0:02:01.378,0:02:03.586 It happened to lots of mammals. 0:02:03.586,0:02:06.209 Another keystone species is a famous animal 0:02:06.209,0:02:08.274 called the European aurochs. 0:02:08.274,0:02:10.729 There was sort of a movie made about it recently. 0:02:10.729,0:02:13.337 And the aurochs was like the bison. 0:02:13.337,0:02:16.517 This was an animal that basically kept the forest 0:02:16.517,0:02:21.569 mixed with grasslands across the entire Europe and Asian continent, 0:02:21.569,0:02:23.913 from Spain to Korea. 0:02:23.913,0:02:26.041 The documentation of this animal goes back 0:02:26.041,0:02:29.266 to the Lascaux cave paintings. 0:02:29.266,0:02:31.458 The extinctions still go on. 0:02:31.458,0:02:34.487 There's an ibex in Spain called the bucardo. 0:02:34.487,0:02:36.833 It went extinct in 2000. 0:02:36.833,0:02:39.590 There was a marvelous animal, a marsupial wolf 0:02:39.590,0:02:43.321 called the thylacine in Tasmania, south of Australia, 0:02:43.321,0:02:45.391 called the Tasmanian tiger. 0:02:45.391,0:02:49.709 It was hunted until there were just a few left to die in zoos. 0:02:49.709,0:02:52.745 A little bit of film was shot. 0:03:03.593,0:03:08.850 Sorrow, anger, mourning. 0:03:08.850,0:03:12.006 Don't mourn. Organize. 0:03:12.006,0:03:15.625 What if you could find out that, using the DNA in museum specimens, 0:03:15.625,0:03:18.622 fossils maybe up to 200,000 years old 0:03:18.622,0:03:21.060 could be used to bring species back, 0:03:21.060,0:03:22.684 what would you do? Where would you start? 0:03:22.684,0:03:25.598 Well, you'd start by finding out if the biotech is really there. 0:03:25.598,0:03:27.690 I started with my wife, Ryan Phelan, 0:03:27.690,0:03:30.824 who ran a biotech business called DNA Direct, 0:03:30.824,0:03:34.873 and through her, one of her colleagues, George Church, 0:03:34.873,0:03:37.568 one of the leading genetic engineers 0:03:37.568,0:03:40.577 who turned out to be also obsessed with passenger pigeons 0:03:40.577,0:03:42.188 and a lot of confidence 0:03:42.188,0:03:44.500 that methodologies he was working on 0:03:44.500,0:03:46.589 might actually do the deed. 0:03:46.589,0:03:49.844 So he and Ryan organized and hosted a meeting 0:03:49.844,0:03:52.108 at the Wyss Institute in Harvard bringing together 0:03:52.108,0:03:56.719 specialists on passenger pigeons, conservation ornithologists, bioethicists, 0:03:56.719,0:04:00.832 and fortunately passenger pigeon DNA had already been sequenced 0:04:00.832,0:04:04.123 by a molecular biologist named Beth Shapiro. 0:04:04.123,0:04:07.002 All she needed from those specimens at the Smithsonian 0:04:07.002,0:04:09.657 was a little bit of toe pad tissue, 0:04:09.657,0:04:13.040 because down in there is what is called ancient DNA. 0:04:13.040,0:04:16.012 It's DNA which is pretty badly fragmented, 0:04:16.012,0:04:20.904 but with good techniques now, you can basically reassemble the whole genome. 0:04:20.904,0:04:23.225 Then the question is, can you reassemble, 0:04:23.225,0:04:25.720 with that genome, the whole bird? 0:04:25.720,0:04:28.224 George Church thinks you can. 0:04:28.224,0:04:31.289 So in his book, "Regenesis," which I recommend, 0:04:31.289,0:04:34.752 he has a chapter on the science of bringing back extinct species, 0:04:34.752,0:04:36.288 and he has a machine called 0:04:36.288,0:04:39.736 the Multiplex Automated Genome Engineering machine. 0:04:39.736,0:04:41.470 It's kind of like an evolution machine. 0:04:41.470,0:04:44.176 You try combinations of genes that you write 0:04:44.176,0:04:47.416 at the cell level and then in organs on a chip, 0:04:47.416,0:04:49.325 and the ones that win, that you can then put 0:04:49.325,0:04:52.022 into a living organism. It'll work. 0:04:52.022,0:04:55.216 The precision of this, one of George's famous unreadable slides, 0:04:55.216,0:04:59.815 nevertheless points out that there's a level of precision here 0:04:59.815,0:05:02.381 right down to the individual base pair. 0:05:02.381,0:05:06.520 The passenger pigeon has 1.3 billion base pairs in its genome. 0:05:06.520,0:05:09.525 So what you're getting is the capability now 0:05:09.525,0:05:13.050 of replacing one gene with another variation of that gene. 0:05:13.050,0:05:14.953 It's called an allele. 0:05:14.953,0:05:17.803 Well that's what happens in normal hybridization anyway. 0:05:17.803,0:05:20.994 So this is a form of synthetic hybridization of the genome 0:05:20.994,0:05:22.874 of an extinct species 0:05:22.874,0:05:26.404 with the genome of its closest living relative. 0:05:26.404,0:05:29.119 Now along the way, George points out that 0:05:29.119,0:05:32.930 his technology, the technology of synthetic biology, 0:05:32.930,0:05:36.736 is currently accelerating at four times the rate of Moore's Law. 0:05:36.736,0:05:41.024 It's been doing that since 2005, and it's likely to continue. 0:05:41.024,0:05:43.728 Okay, the closest living relative of the passenger pigeon 0:05:43.728,0:05:47.022 is the band-tailed pigeon. They're abundant. There's some around here. 0:05:47.022,0:05:51.110 Genetically, the band-tailed pigeon already is 0:05:51.110,0:05:53.478 mostly living passenger pigeon. 0:05:53.478,0:05:55.913 There's just some bits that are band-tailed pigeon. 0:05:55.913,0:05:58.657 If you replace those bits with passenger pigeon bits, 0:05:58.657,0:06:02.872 you've got the extinct bird back, cooing at you. 0:06:02.872,0:06:04.780 Now, there's work to do. 0:06:04.780,0:06:07.494 You have to figure out exactly what genes matter. 0:06:07.494,0:06:10.136 So there's genes for the short tail in the band-tailed pigeon, 0:06:10.136,0:06:12.836 genes for the long tail in the passenger pigeon, 0:06:12.836,0:06:16.394 and so on with the red eye, peach-colored breast, flocking, and so on. 0:06:16.394,0:06:19.265 Add them all up and the result won't be perfect. 0:06:19.265,0:06:21.243 But it should be be perfect enough, 0:06:21.243,0:06:23.889 because nature doesn't do perfect either. 0:06:23.889,0:06:28.065 So this meeting in Boston led to three things. 0:06:28.065,0:06:31.611 First off, Ryan and I decided to create a nonprofit 0:06:31.611,0:06:35.264 called Revive and Restore that would push de-extinction generally 0:06:35.264,0:06:38.415 and try to have it go in a responsible way, 0:06:38.415,0:06:41.703 and we would push ahead with the passenger pigeon. 0:06:41.703,0:06:45.768 Another direct result was a young grad student named Ben Novak, 0:06:45.768,0:06:49.024 who had been obsessed with passenger pigeons since he was 14 0:06:49.024,0:06:52.087 and had also learned how to work with ancient DNA, 0:06:52.087,0:06:55.398 himself sequenced the passenger pigeon, 0:06:55.398,0:06:58.013 using money from his family and friends. 0:06:58.013,0:07:00.160 We hired him full-time. 0:07:00.160,0:07:03.824 Now, this photograph I took of him last year at the Smithsonian, 0:07:03.824,0:07:06.055 he's looking down at Martha, 0:07:06.055,0:07:08.840 the last passenger pigeon alive. 0:07:08.840,0:07:11.575 So if he's successful, she won't be the last. 0:07:11.575,0:07:14.457 The third result of the Boston meeting was the realization 0:07:14.457,0:07:16.290 that there are scientists all over the world 0:07:16.290,0:07:18.264 working on various forms of de-extinction, 0:07:18.264,0:07:20.079 but they'd never met each other. 0:07:20.079,0:07:22.063 And National Geographic got interested 0:07:22.063,0:07:24.546 because National Geographic has the theory that 0:07:24.546,0:07:27.919 the last century, discovery was basically finding things, 0:07:27.919,0:07:31.996 and in this century, discovery is basically making things. 0:07:31.996,0:07:33.820 De-extinction falls in that category. 0:07:33.820,0:07:37.654 So they hosted and funded this meeting. And 35 scientists, 0:07:37.654,0:07:40.934 they were conservation biologists and molecular biologists, 0:07:40.934,0:07:44.350 basically meeting to see if they had work to do together. 0:07:44.350,0:07:46.716 Some of these conservation biologists are pretty radical. 0:07:46.716,0:07:50.278 There's three of them who are not just re-creating ancient species, 0:07:50.278,0:07:53.399 they're recreating extinct ecosystems 0:07:53.399,0:07:57.267 in northern Siberia, in the Netherlands, and in Hawaii. 0:07:57.267,0:07:59.542 Henri, from the Netherlands, 0:07:59.542,0:08:02.233 with a Dutch last name I won't try to pronounce, 0:08:02.233,0:08:04.478 is working on the aurochs. 0:08:04.478,0:08:08.831 The aurochs is the ancestor of all domestic cattle, 0:08:08.831,0:08:14.405 and so basically its genome is alive, it's just unevenly distributed. 0:08:14.405,0:08:16.819 So what they're doing is working with seven breeds 0:08:16.819,0:08:21.574 of primitive, hardy-looking cattle like that Maremmana primitivo on the top there 0:08:21.574,0:08:25.039 to rebuild, over time, with selective back-breeding, 0:08:25.039,0:08:27.102 the aurochs. 0:08:27.102,0:08:30.135 Now, re-wilding is moving faster in Korea 0:08:30.135,0:08:31.994 than it is in America, 0:08:31.994,0:08:35.654 and so the plan is, with these re-wilded areas all over Europe, 0:08:35.654,0:08:38.862 they will introduce the aurochs to do its old job, 0:08:38.862,0:08:40.804 its old ecological role, 0:08:40.804,0:08:44.063 of clearing the somewhat barren, closed-canopy forest 0:08:44.063,0:08:47.874 so that it has these biodiverse meadows in it. 0:08:47.874,0:08:49.689 Another amazing story 0:08:49.689,0:08:53.087 came from Alberto Fernández-Arias. 0:08:53.087,0:08:56.406 Alberto worked with the bucardo in Spain. 0:08:56.406,0:08:59.239 The last bucardo was a female named Celia 0:08:59.239,0:09:03.802 who was still alive, but then they captured her, 0:09:03.802,0:09:06.214 they got a little bit of tissue from her ear, 0:09:06.214,0:09:09.398 they cryopreserved it in liquid nitrogen, 0:09:09.398,0:09:11.184 released her back into the wild, 0:09:11.184,0:09:14.934 but a few months later, she was found dead under a fallen tree. 0:09:14.934,0:09:17.542 They took the DNA from that ear, 0:09:17.542,0:09:20.982 they planted it as a cloned egg in a goat, 0:09:20.982,0:09:23.056 the pregnancy came to term, 0:09:23.056,0:09:25.271 and a live baby bucardo was born. 0:09:25.271,0:09:28.119 It was the first de-extinction in history. 0:09:28.119,0:09:31.662 (Applause) 0:09:31.662,0:09:32.889 It was short-lived. 0:09:32.889,0:09:36.527 Sometimes interspecies clones have respiration problems. 0:09:36.527,0:09:39.568 This one had a malformed lung and died after 10 minutes, 0:09:39.568,0:09:42.648 but Alberto was confident that 0:09:42.648,0:09:45.048 cloning has moved along well since then, 0:09:45.048,0:09:46.587 and this will move ahead, and eventually 0:09:46.587,0:09:48.594 there will be a population of bucardos 0:09:48.594,0:09:51.851 back in the mountains in northern Spain. 0:09:51.851,0:09:55.677 Cryopreservation pioneer of great depth is Oliver Ryder. 0:09:55.677,0:09:58.064 At the San Diego zoo, his frozen zoo 0:09:58.064,0:10:02.015 has collected the tissues from over 1,000 species 0:10:02.015,0:10:04.993 over the last 35 years. 0:10:04.993,0:10:07.024 Now, when it's frozen that deep, 0:10:07.024,0:10:09.744 minus 196 degrees Celsius, 0:10:09.744,0:10:12.376 the cells are intact and the DNA is intact. 0:10:12.376,0:10:14.453 They're basically viable cells, 0:10:14.453,0:10:18.081 so someone like Bob Lanza at Advanced Cell Technology 0:10:18.081,0:10:21.296 took some of that tissue from an endangered animal 0:10:21.296,0:10:23.490 called the Javan banteng, put it in a cow, 0:10:23.490,0:10:26.540 the cow went to term, and what was born 0:10:26.540,0:10:31.621 was a live, healthy baby Javan banteng, 0:10:31.621,0:10:35.024 who thrived and is still alive. 0:10:35.024,0:10:37.800 The most exciting thing for Bob Lanza 0:10:37.800,0:10:40.488 is the ability now to take any kind of cell 0:10:40.488,0:10:42.936 with induced pluripotent stem cells 0:10:42.936,0:10:46.909 and turn it into germ cells, like sperm and eggs. 0:10:46.909,0:10:49.192 So now we go to Mike McGrew 0:10:49.192,0:10:52.688 who is a scientist at Roslin Institute in Scotland, 0:10:52.688,0:10:54.992 and Mike's doing miracles with birds. 0:10:54.992,0:10:58.512 So he'll take, say, falcon skin cells, fibroblast, 0:10:58.512,0:11:01.300 turn it into induced pluripotent stem cells. 0:11:01.300,0:11:04.730 Since it's so pluripotent, it can become germ plasm. 0:11:04.730,0:11:06.986 He then has a way to put the germ plasm 0:11:06.986,0:11:10.530 into the embryo of a chicken egg 0:11:10.530,0:11:13.801 so that that chicken will have, basically, 0:11:13.801,0:11:15.642 the gonads of a falcon. 0:11:15.642,0:11:17.556 You get a male and a female each of those, 0:11:17.556,0:11:20.497 and out of them comes falcons. 0:11:20.497,0:11:22.456 (Laughter) 0:11:22.456,0:11:27.581 Real falcons out of slightly doctored chickens. 0:11:27.581,0:11:30.058 Ben Novak was the youngest scientist at the meeting. 0:11:30.058,0:11:32.487 He showed how all of this can be put together. 0:11:32.487,0:11:35.033 The sequence of events: he'll put together the genomes 0:11:35.033,0:11:37.411 of the band-tailed pigeon and the passenger pigeon, 0:11:37.411,0:11:40.361 he'll take the techniques of George Church 0:11:40.361,0:11:42.642 and get passenger pigeon DNA, 0:11:42.642,0:11:45.327 the techniques of Robert Lanza and Michael McGrew, 0:11:45.327,0:11:47.586 get that DNA into chicken gonads, 0:11:47.586,0:11:51.805 and out of the chicken gonads get passenger pigeon eggs, squabs, 0:11:51.805,0:11:55.291 and now you're getting a population of passenger pigeons. 0:11:55.291,0:11:57.235 It does raise the question of, 0:11:57.235,0:11:59.208 they're not going to have passenger pigeon parents 0:11:59.208,0:12:01.834 to teach them how to be a passenger pigeon. 0:12:01.834,0:12:04.090 So what do you do about that? 0:12:04.090,0:12:06.763 Well birds are pretty hard-wired, as it happens, 0:12:06.763,0:12:09.130 so most of that is already in their DNA, 0:12:09.130,0:12:11.914 but to supplement it, part of Ben's idea 0:12:11.914,0:12:13.570 is to use homing pigeons 0:12:13.570,0:12:16.740 to help train the young passenger pigeons how to flock 0:12:16.740,0:12:19.474 and how to find their way to their old nesting grounds 0:12:19.474,0:12:22.623 and feeding grounds. 0:12:22.623,0:12:24.261 There were some conservationists, 0:12:24.261,0:12:27.337 really famous conservationists like Stanley Temple, 0:12:27.337,0:12:29.953 who is one of the founders of conservation biology, 0:12:29.953,0:12:34.609 and Kate Jones from the IUCN, which does the Red List. 0:12:34.609,0:12:36.570 They're excited about all this, 0:12:36.570,0:12:39.073 but they're also concerned that it might be competitive 0:12:39.073,0:12:42.111 with the extremely important efforts to protect 0:12:42.111,0:12:44.321 endangered species that are still alive, 0:12:44.321,0:12:46.167 that haven't gone extinct yet. 0:12:46.167,0:12:48.540 You see, you want to work on protecting the animals out there. 0:12:48.540,0:12:52.769 You want to work on getting the market for ivory in Asia down 0:12:52.769,0:12:56.647 so you're not using 25,000 elephants a year. 0:12:56.647,0:12:59.697 But at the same time, conservation biologists are realizing 0:12:59.697,0:13:02.281 that bad news bums people out. 0:13:02.281,0:13:05.006 And so the Red List is really important, keep track of 0:13:05.006,0:13:08.330 what's endangered and critically endangered, and so on. 0:13:08.330,0:13:11.355 But they're about to create what they call a Green List, 0:13:11.355,0:13:15.737 and the Green List will have species that are doing fine, thank you, 0:13:15.737,0:13:18.041 species that were endangered, like the bald eagle, 0:13:18.041,0:13:21.656 but they're much better off now, thanks to everybody's good work, 0:13:21.656,0:13:23.822 and protected areas around the world 0:13:23.822,0:13:25.583 that are very, very well managed. 0:13:25.583,0:13:29.686 So basically, they're learning how to build on good news. 0:13:29.686,0:13:32.797 And they see reviving extinct species 0:13:32.797,0:13:35.677 as the kind of good news you might be able to build on. 0:13:35.677,0:13:39.002 Here's a couple related examples. 0:13:39.002,0:13:42.213 Captive breeding will be a major part of bringing back these species. 0:13:42.213,0:13:45.629 The California condor was down to 22 birds in 1987. 0:13:45.629,0:13:47.338 Everybody thought is was finished. 0:13:47.338,0:13:50.158 Thanks to captive breeding at the San Diego Zoo, 0:13:50.158,0:13:54.178 there's 405 of them now, 226 are out in the wild. 0:13:54.178,0:13:58.387 That technology will be used on de-extincted animals. 0:13:58.387,0:14:01.854 Another success story is the mountain gorilla in Central Africa. 0:14:01.854,0:14:05.237 In 1981, Dian Fossey was sure they were going extinct. 0:14:05.237,0:14:07.270 There were just 254 left. 0:14:07.270,0:14:10.809 Now there are 880. They're increasing in population 0:14:10.809,0:14:12.902 by three percent a year. 0:14:12.902,0:14:16.293 The secret is, they have an eco-tourism program, 0:14:16.293,0:14:17.962 which is absolutely brilliant. 0:14:17.962,0:14:20.597 So this photograph was taken last month by Ryan 0:14:20.597,0:14:23.373 with an iPhone. 0:14:23.373,0:14:27.688 That's how comfortable these wild gorillas are with visitors. 0:14:27.688,0:14:31.423 Another interesting project, though it's going to need some help, 0:14:31.423,0:14:33.334 is the northern white rhinoceros. 0:14:33.334,0:14:35.295 There's no breeding pairs left. 0:14:35.295,0:14:37.465 But this is the kind of thing that 0:14:37.465,0:14:41.605 a wide variety of DNA for this animal is available in the frozen zoo. 0:14:41.605,0:14:44.400 A bit of cloning, you can get them back. 0:14:44.400,0:14:46.590 So where do we go from here? 0:14:46.590,0:14:48.254 These have been private meetings so far. 0:14:48.254,0:14:50.911 I think it's time for the subject to go public. 0:14:50.911,0:14:52.378 What do people think about it? 0:14:52.378,0:14:54.457 You know, do you want extinct species back? 0:14:54.457,0:14:57.309 Do you want extinct species back? 0:14:57.309,0:15:02.575 (Applause) 0:15:02.575,0:15:05.071 Tinker Bell is going to come fluttering down. 0:15:05.071,0:15:06.285 It is a Tinker Bell moment, 0:15:06.285,0:15:08.681 because what are people excited about with this? 0:15:08.681,0:15:10.732 What are they concerned about? 0:15:10.732,0:15:13.179 We're also going to push ahead with the passenger pigeon. 0:15:13.179,0:15:16.949 So Ben Novak, even as we speak, is joining the group 0:15:16.949,0:15:20.270 that Beth Shapiro has at UC Santa Cruz. 0:15:20.270,0:15:21.658 They're going to work on the genomes 0:15:21.658,0:15:23.945 of the passenger pigeon and the band-tailed pigeon. 0:15:23.945,0:15:27.854 As that data matures, they'll send it to George Church, 0:15:27.854,0:15:31.749 who will work his magic, get passenger pigeon DNA out of that. 0:15:31.749,0:15:34.593 We'll get help from Bob Lanza and Mike McGrew 0:15:34.593,0:15:37.660 to get that into germ plasm that can go into chickens 0:15:37.660,0:15:40.228 that can produce passenger pigeon squabs 0:15:40.228,0:15:42.692 that can be raised by band-tailed pigeon parents, 0:15:42.692,0:15:44.948 and then from then on, it's passenger pigeons all the way, 0:15:44.948,0:15:48.084 maybe for the next six million years. 0:15:48.084,0:15:50.399 You can do the same thing, as the costs come down, 0:15:50.399,0:15:53.621 for the Carolina parakeet, for the great auk, 0:15:53.621,0:15:56.416 for the heath hen, for the ivory-billed woodpecker, 0:15:56.416,0:15:58.522 for the Eskimo curlew, for the Caribbean monk seal, 0:15:58.522,0:16:01.388 for the woolly mammoth. 0:16:01.388,0:16:03.864 Because the fact is, humans have made a huge hole 0:16:03.864,0:16:06.954 in nature in the last 10,000 years. 0:16:06.954,0:16:08.993 We have the ability now, 0:16:08.993,0:16:13.857 and maybe the moral obligation, to repair some of the damage. 0:16:13.857,0:16:18.405 Most of that we'll do by expanding and protecting wildlands, 0:16:18.405,0:16:20.074 by expanding and protecting 0:16:20.074,0:16:24.601 the populations of endangered species. 0:16:24.601,0:16:26.756 But some species 0:16:26.756,0:16:31.939 that we killed off totally 0:16:31.939,0:16:35.253 we could consider bringing back 0:16:35.253,0:16:38.420 to a world that misses them. 0:16:38.420,0:16:40.630 Thank you. 0:16:40.630,0:16:51.828 (Applause) 0:16:51.828,0:16:53.682 Chris Anderson: Thank you. 0:16:53.682,0:16:55.494 I've got a question. 0:16:55.494,0:17:00.244 So, this is an emotional topic. Some people stand. 0:17:00.244,0:17:03.100 I suspect there are some people out there sitting, 0:17:03.100,0:17:06.109 kind of asking tormented questions, almost, about, 0:17:06.109,0:17:08.019 well, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait a minute, 0:17:08.019,0:17:11.116 there's something wrong with mankind 0:17:11.116,0:17:14.596 interfering in nature in this way. 0:17:14.596,0:17:18.068 There's going to be unintended consequences. 0:17:18.068,0:17:20.845 You're going to uncork some sort of Pandora's box 0:17:20.845,0:17:24.831 of who-knows-what. Do they have a point? 0:17:24.831,0:17:26.331 Stewart Brand: Well, the earlier point is 0:17:26.331,0:17:29.882 we interfered in a big way by making these animals go extinct, 0:17:29.882,0:17:32.423 and many of them were keystone species, 0:17:32.423,0:17:34.932 and we changed the whole ecosystem they were in 0:17:34.932,0:17:36.725 by letting them go. 0:17:36.725,0:17:39.306 Now, there's the shifting baseline problem, which is, 0:17:39.306,0:17:40.844 so when these things come back, 0:17:40.844,0:17:43.135 they might replace some birds that are there 0:17:43.135,0:17:45.529 that people really know and love. 0:17:45.529,0:17:48.276 I think that's, you know, part of how it'll work. 0:17:48.276,0:17:51.161 This is a long, slow process -- 0:17:51.161,0:17:53.395 One of the things I like about it, it's multi-generation. 0:17:53.395,0:17:55.452 We will get woolly mammoths back. 0:17:55.452,0:17:57.228 CA: Well it feels like both the conversation 0:17:57.228,0:17:59.516 and the potential here are pretty thrilling. 0:17:59.516,0:18:01.230 Thank you so much for presenting. SB: Thank you. 0:18:01.230,0:18:03.953 CA: Thank you. (Applause)