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Editorial: Mammoth De-Extinction Is Bad Conservation—A Spectacle That Undermines Real Elephant Welfare and Climate Action

We stand at a crossroads where biotechnology promises to rewrite the past while offering to reshape the future. The debate over de-extinction, spearheaded by Colossal Biosciences’ push to resurrect woolly mammoths and related species, has moved beyond laboratory milestones into questions of ecological reality, animal welfare, and practical conservation. Proponents argue that resurrecting giant herbivores could reset Arctic ecosystems, bolster climate resilience, and bolster endangered relatives through a broader conservation narrative. Critics counter that the endeavor is ill-suited to conservation needs, ethically fraught, and economically misaligned with the real, immediate pressures faced by wild elephants and other keystone species. This article examines the claims, the evidence, and the choices that really matter for climate action, biodiversity, and the welfare of living beings.

Colossal Biosciences and the De-Extinction Drive: Ambitions, Milestones, and the Public Narrative

Colossal Biosciences has positioned itself at the forefront of a controversial scientific frontier: the resurrection of extinct species through gene editing and advanced reproductive technologies. The company has publicized milestones that blend scientific achievement with a broader narrative about ecological restoration and climate mitigation. Notably, last year Colossal announced the successful generation of stem cells from the Asian elephant, the mammoth’s closest living relative. This biological step is marketed as laying groundwork for future hybrid or fully resurrected forms. More recently, the company released images of mice engineered to express mammoth-like coats, a vivid demonstration of genetic manipulation’s reach and a signal of technical progress toward their ultimate objective. The public-facing narrative frames these advances as harbingers of tangible conservation benefits that could ripple across ecosystems from tropical biomes to Arctic landscapes.

Institutional leadership from renowned figures, including scientists with affiliations to top universities, frames Colossal’s work as a forward step in conservation biology. The company’s founders and supporters argue that mammoth restoration could address climate-related challenges by reconstituting grassland ecosystems that once dominated northern latitudes. The argument runs along the lines of climate adaptation: large herbivores grazing perennially could alter snow and soil dynamics in ways that stabilize permafrost and reduce greenhouse gas release. In public statements, George Church, a high-profile geneticist associated with several ambitious genomic endeavors, has argued that such research could yield positive conservation outcomes for endangered species—an assertion that positions the mammoth project within a broader philanthropic and scientific mandate to safeguard biodiversity. The rhetoric is unabashedly optimistic, suggesting that lab progress translates into real-world conservation impacts across ecological and geographical scales.

Financially, Colossal’s trajectory has attracted intense attention from investors and the media, culminating in a valuation reported to be in the tens of billions of dollars. This valuation signals a belief among supporters that the project will eventually deliver not only a historical or cultural spectacle but also measurable ecological dividends. The company has claimed that de-extinction research will translate into benefits that touch various environmental domains—from soil health and nutrient cycling to atmospheric processes and global climate dynamics. The optimism rests on a chain of assumed causal links: resurrected mammoths would graze on grasslands, shifting vegetation structure, altering snow dynamics, affecting soil temperatures, and ultimately influencing permafrost stability and greenhouse gas fluxes. Whether these links are robust and scalable remains a central point of contention for ecologists, climate scientists, and ethicists alike.

Beyond the science, the Colossal narrative has become a business and media phenomenon. The spectacle of revival biology captures the imagination of the public and captures headlines, drawing attention and capital to an emerging field. As a result, the project has evolved into more than a lab experiment—it has become a symbol in the broader debate about how far biotechnology should go in altering ecosystems and species identities. The public-facing story emphasizes not only scientific novelty but also the potential for tangible conservation outcomes and a new paradigm for environmental stewardship. The tension between wonder, risk, and responsibility is a defining feature of the ongoing discourse surrounding mammoth de-extinction and related ventures.

In practical terms, however, much of Colossal’s work is conducted in controlled laboratory and breeding environments, with regulatory landscapes, ethical considerations, and ecological uncertainties shaping the pace and direction of progress. The company’s claims about climate and conservation, while attracting broad interest, rest on a suite of assumptions about how ancient ecological relationships would translate into modern contexts and how a revived mammoth would integrate with contemporary Arctic ecosystems. These assumptions are central to the debate: do resurrected megafauna offer a viable, scalable tool for climate mitigation and biodiversity protection, or do they risk consuming resources, attention, and ethical capital that could be directed toward more certain conservation gains?

Crucially, the public conversation often glosses over the complexity of ecological networks and the multifaceted costs associated with creating and maintaining large, sentient organisms in captive and newly introduced environments. The question is not merely whether meaningful biological engineering is possible but whether it would produce net benefits that justify the immense financial, ethical, and ecological risks. In the end, the Colossal project presents a compelling case study in the tension between scientific audacity and ecological realism, a tension that should guide policymakers, conservationists, and the public as they weigh the next steps in climate action and biodiversity protection.

Ecological Claims and the Evidence: What We Know, What We Don’t, and What It Takes to Translate Past Roles into Future Realities

Proponents of de-extinction often anchor their argument in a broader claim: restoring a keystone mammoth in Arctic grasslands could reconstitute ecological processes that have declined with the disappearance of megafauna, thereby contributing to climate stabilization and habitat resilience. On the surface, the logic sounds persuasive. Reintroducing or simulating the ecological function of an extinct megaherbivore could, in theory, alter vegetation structure, snow accumulation, soil temperature, and permafrost dynamics in ways that temper greenhouse gas release. The Colossal website and related materials articulate this line of reasoning: large, cold-tolerant herbivores grazing on grasses could strip snow more effectively, exposing the soil to cold air and retarding permafrost thaw; their foraging and trampling could influence snowmelt timing and sunlight absorption, thereby modulating regional climate dynamics over extended periods.

Yet the ecological science behind these claims remains unsettled and, in several respects, contested. The Yellowstone wolf reintroduction story has become a touchstone in public discussions about trophic cascades and ecosystem engineering, but subsequent scholarship has challenged the universality and robustness of those cascade effects. Early research suggested that wolves, by curbing elk populations and altering their habitat use, could indirectly boost riparian vegetation, influencing beavers, birds, and even hydrological dynamics. A widely circulated YouTube narrative popularized these ideas, while later re-analyses and replication attempts highlighted methodological concerns and alternative explanations, including the potential role of human hunting pressure on elk populations. A 2019 review by multiple researchers concluded that the most robust science at that time did not support a consistent trophic cascade in Yellowstone. Other apex predator stories—about tigers or sharks—also faced scrutiny when subjected to rigorous analysis, underscoring a broader issue: trophic interactions are context-dependent, spatially variable, and sensitive to a host of confounding factors.

Elephants, routinely described as keystone species in many ecological narratives, are central to several of Colossal’s ecological claims. Their seed dispersal capacity—through excrement that carries a diversity of plant seeds—has been emphasized as a mechanism for maintaining ecosystem health across varied environments. The notion is that elephant-mediated dispersal supports plant diversity and forest structure, potentially impacting carbon storage indirectly. However, empirical reality is nuanced. Research, including fieldwork conducted for doctoral studies in northeast India, indicates that elephants are particularly effective at dispersing seeds for certain large-fruited species, while other animal groups—domestic cattle, macaques, and even ants—also contribute to seed dispersal in meaningful ways. The net effect on forest composition and resilience does not translate into a simple, uniform forecast of catastrophic loss or dramatic gain in the elephants’ absence. In other words, while elephants clearly influence plant community dynamics, the degree to which their disappearance would reshape ecosystems is not uniformly predictable or uniform across biomes.

Carbon sequestration and the broader climate implications of elephant populations yield a similarly mixed picture. Some studies suggest that African forest elephants may indirectly promote carbon storage by altering tree communities, allowing hardwoods to persist in ways that favor sequestration. In contrast, other lines of evidence indicate that elephants can downstrip forests, opening up savannas and reducing the density of carbon-rich forests. This dichotomy highlights a crucial point: the ecological role of mega-herbivores is highly context-dependent, varying with forest type, regional climate, and the interplay with other herbivores and plant communities. When translated into Arctic and temperate grassland systems—where the Colossal project imagines introducing mammoth-like animals—the extrapolation becomes even more speculative. The granular ecological data from target northern ecosystems are sparse, and the predictive models required to generalize from modern analogs to ancient mammoth-driven dynamics remain uncertain and contested.

Colossal’s own reliance on peer-reviewed studies to support their ecological claims is noteworthy, but it also invites scrutiny. The company highlights a study that suggests maintaining high populations of large herbivores in northern grassland systems could lower ground temperatures and help protect permafrost. While the study’s findings are intriguing, they raise further questions: Can policy-makers feasibly scale such herbivore populations across expansive northern latitudes? Is it possible to replicate the same ecological balance using existing species, which would avoid the complexities and risks of resurrecting mammoth-like organisms? And if such a replication is feasible, would it deliver climate benefits with greater certainty and lower risk than a de-extinction program? Ecologists caution that warming winters, shifting snow patterns, and the intricacies of soil microbiomes could counterintuitively undermine the very benefits proponents seek. Trampling could compact soils in ways that accelerate heat transfer or disrupt insulating snow layers, depending on regional climate trajectories and the seasonality of snow cover.

In this light, the broader claim that “we need mammoths because they are uniquely capable of achieving climate-restorative outcomes” becomes a hypothesis that must be tested against a complex array of ecological, biogeochemical, and social variables. The reality is not simply a matter of resurrecting an extinct species and watching climate benefits unfold. It requires an integrated understanding of how a mammoth-like organism would interact with existing flora, soil microbes, hydrology, predator-prey dynamics, competition with other herbivores, disease ecology, and the broader social-ecological system in which it would exist. And because contemporary Arctic and subarctic ecosystems are already under pressure from climate change, land-use shifts, and human activity, any intervention must be evaluated against the counterfactual of improving welfare for living species and habitat, not just demonstrating a dramatic new capability in genetic engineering.

The core takeaway from the ecological discussion is this: ecosystems are diverse, dynamic, and historically contingent. They do not yield uniform, linear responses to the reintroduction or augmentation of megafauna in predictable ways. The allure of a clean causal chain from mammoth restoration to climate stabilization overlooks the messy reality of ecological networks, where outcomes depend on context, scale, timing, and the interaction of multiple stressors. Until robust, location-specific evidence demonstrates that resurrecting mammoths would yield net ecological and climate benefits that cannot be achieved through existing species management or habitat restoration, public policy and conservation investment should proceed with caution. The ecological narrative advanced by Colossal—though scientifically ambitious—rests on a series of conditional propositions that require far more empirical validation before they can justify the vast financial and ethical commitments involved.

Ethical Considerations and Welfare Implications: The Human and Nonhuman Costs of Surrogate Mammoths

Ethical dimensions are central to the mammoth de-extinction debate. Colossal’s publicly stated plan envisions using healthy Asian or African elephants as surrogates for mammoth calves, introducing a potential new set of welfare concerns within the realm of modern wildlife conservation. The firm’s published “10 steps” for mammoth resurrection explicitly outline steps that culminate in implanting embryos into surrogate elephants and caring for those surrogates in high-standard facilities for the duration of gestation and beyond. This portrayal crystallizes a longstanding and closely observed issue in conservation biology: when interventions require working with sentient, highly social animals—such as elephants—the welfare costs and ethical trade-offs become particularly acute and increasingly scrutinized.

The ethics of relying on captive elephants as surrogates for mammoth offspring touch on fundamental questions about how societies value individual animal suffering. International conservation organizations and welfare advocates have long grappled with whether the biodiversity or population-level objectives of a program justify individual-level harms and burdens, especially when those burdens are borne by highly sentient beings with complex social structures. In the case of Colossal’s approach, the surrogate system would inevitably involve multiple elephants undergoing reproductive procedures that can be associated with pain, stress, and health risks. The long gestation periods, potential for complications, and the stress of captivity on sentient species would be central concerns for animal welfare advocates. The prospect of repeated breeding attempts—an inevitable feature of any trial-and-error approach in genetic treasure hunts—amplifies concerns about suffering, as a high failure rate would entail prolonged periods of distress for both mothers and calves.

A broader ethical lens casts doubt on whether the costs in terms of animal welfare can be offset by the purported biodiversity gains. Even if a few mammoth calves were to survive, the social and cultural life that defines elephants would not simply be copied into mammoth-like creatures. Modern elephants’ social bonds, matriarch-led herd behavior, and experiential learning are foundational to their ability to survive, adapt, and navigate complex landscapes. Recreating a mammoth with a mixed genetic heritage could disrupt these social dynamics in unpredictable ways, potentially compounding welfare challenges for the animals involved. The social dimension of elephant life—caregiving behaviors, alloparental care, and the transmission of cultural knowledge—would be at risk of disruption in any attempt to integrate lab-generated chimeric beings into herds or into wild settings.

The welfare questions extend beyond captivity to the potential introduction of mammoth-like beings into Arctic environments. If mammoths were to reach the wild, they would require social structures, foraging knowledge, and survival strategies honed over millennia. The likelihood that a laboratory-created or hybrid mammoth could acquire, adapt, and sustain such culturally transmitted knowledge in a radically altered Arctic ecosystem is uncertain. Experts warn that novel beings, lacking the deep cultural and ecological scaffolding that living megafauna have developed across generations, might fail to cope with the harsh realities of Arctic life. In such scenarios, the risk of prolonged suffering, mortality, and ecological disruption becomes a critical ethical concern.

Even in the best-case scenario—where a stable, healthy mammoth herd could be established without excessive cruelty—the trajectory of welfare outcomes would be highly contingent. The immediate costs of welfare in the early stages of development and breeding would need to be weighed against any long-term ecological or climate benefits. This requires transparent, rigorous, and ongoing welfare monitoring with independent oversight, something that has historically been uneven in wildlife interventions that prioritize population-level outcomes over individual well-being. In the absence of robust welfare frameworks, the ethical case against de-extinction projects like Colossal’s strengthens.

Another ethical dimension concerns the broader goals of conservation. The mammoth revival narrative has a powerful storytelling appeal, one that can shape public imagination and funding priorities. There is a real risk that the spectacle aspect of such projects diverts attention and resources away from proven conservation actions that deliver tangible benefits for living species. For example, many keystone species-critical conservation challenges—habitat loss, human-wildlife conflict, poaching, and ecosystem connectivity—require sustained investments, community engagement, and long-term planning. If resources are diverted toward de-extinction research, the opportunity costs to real-world welfare improvements for elephants and other wildlife increase. Critics view this as an ethical failure of optics—where the allure of resurrecting a distant ancestor eclipses the immediate, measurable welfare and biodiversity needs of the present.

A pragmatic ethical stance emphasizes accountability, proportionality, and evidence. If de-extinction projects cannot demonstrate clear, ethically sound pathways to net improvements in animal welfare and ecosystem health, then it is incumbent on researchers, funders, and policymakers to scrutinize the justification for proceeding. The ethical calculus must include considerations about the welfare of surrogate elephants, the potential suffering of lab-bred beings, the risk of creating social instability within new populations, and the broader moral implications of manipulating life at such a scale. The literature on animal welfare in captive settings underscores the complexity of meeting needs for space, social interaction, and cognitive stimulation. Elephants, in particular, are among the most cognitively complex and socially integrated of large mammals, raising the stakes of any welfare assessment tied to artificial reproduction or genetic manipulation.

Finally, the ethical critique recognizes that the appeal of de-extinction may be inseparable from a broader social question: should humanity invest in interventions that could deliberately reintroduce a lineage long vanished from living ecosystems, even if such interventions might yield speculative ecological benefits? The answer, for many, is a resounding no—especially in the face of known and documented welfare costs, the uncertain ecological outcomes, and the pressing need to address contemporary threats to living species. In this sense, ethical considerations form a critical counterweight to the scientific and political enthusiasm surrounding mammoth revival, reminding us that the ultimate measure of any conservation project lies in the humane treatment of animals, the reliability of ecological outcomes, and the wisdom of directing scarce resources toward actions with demonstrable and immediate value for the living world.

Opportunity Costs and Policy Realities: Where the Money Could Do More for Living Elephants and Climate

The financial dimension of Colossal’s ambitions invites urgent scrutiny. In an era of finite conservation budgets and competing climate priorities, the opportunity costs of directing substantial capital toward de-extinction work must be weighed against the tangible benefits of proven interventions for living species and ecosystems. The argument for redirecting resources centers on efficiency, equity, and verifiable impact. If funds were reallocated toward practical measures that directly reduce human-wildlife conflict, safeguard habitat connectivity, and support community-based conservation, measurable improvements could accrue much faster than the long arc of de-extinction timelines.

Consider the real-world case of living Asian elephants and the economic and ecological systems that contain them. In a country like India, which hosts the largest population of wild Asian elephants (roughly 27,000 individuals within a human population of about 1.4 billion), the day-to-day pressures of human-elephant interfaces are immense. Despite widespread reverence for elephants, human-elephant conflict remains a grave risk, contributing to hundreds of human fatalities and significant crop and property losses annually. The federal allocation to elephant conservation in this context has been modest—often in the range of a few million dollars per year—when juxtaposed with the long-term needs of habitat protection, corridor restoration, and community-based defense measures. These limited resources are insufficient to comprehensively map elephant range, track movements, and implement sustained, scalable interventions that reduce conflict and promote coexistence.

The opportunity cost argument becomes even more stark when comparing Colossal’s valuation and fundraising scale to the budgets directed at on-the-ground conservation. Colossal’s ability to raise tens of billions of dollars in private capital stands in contrast to the comparatively modest public and NGO funding for elephant conservation in many regions. This disparity invites a critical question: should society prioritize a high-profile, speculative biotechnology program with uncertain ecological payoffs, or should it invest in time-tested conservation strategies that directly improve elephant survival, habitat connectivity, and human-wildlife safety? The latter approach has the advantage of producing verifiable, near-term benefits while strengthening the resilience of ecosystems that elephants—and many other species—depend on.

If decision-makers want to maximize climate and biodiversity gains with existing tools and knowledge, several practical paths stand out. First, targeted investments in habitat restoration and ecological connectivity can help ensure elephants and other species have access to the resources they need to adapt to shifting climates. This includes restoring degraded corridors, protecting key habitats from fragmentation, and enhancing landscape-scale management to maintain ecological processes. Second, mitigating human-elephant conflict through innovative, community-centered approaches can reduce mortality and economic losses while fostering coexistence. Strategies could include early warning systems, crop insurance schemes, and compensation programs that are predictable, timely, and fair. Third, anti-poaching and wildlife trafficking prevention, reinforced by community engagement and technology-driven monitoring (such as AI-based surveillance and automated animal identification), can curb the illegal pressures that undermine elephant populations. Fourth, more robust ecosystem management—addressing invasive plant species, maintaining critical soil-water-plant dynamics, and promoting biodiversity—can support resilience without the uncertainties associated with resurrected megafauna.

From a climate-action perspective, there are also plausible, practical roles for synthetic biology and biotech innovation that do not require reviving extinct animals. For instance, genetic and microbial research could contribute to more resilient crops, reduced methane emissions in ruminants through feed additives, and the development of cultured, cruelty-free proteins for human consumption. These avenues can deliver climate benefits, improve food security, and reduce pressure on wild habitats by offering alternative protein sources. They also avoid the ethical and ecological risks associated with creating organisms that may struggle to adapt to the wild or require artificial environments to survive.

India-specific considerations illustrate the scale of the challenge and the potential for meaningful impact. With one of the world’s most densely populated frontiers for wildlife, protecting elephants means addressing human settlement pressures, agricultural practices, and invasive species. Investments in human-wildlife coexistence programs—such as community-based monitoring, compensation frameworks for crop and property losses, and improved land-use planning—could substantially reduce conflict and increase tolerance for elephants among local populations. At the same time, improving habitat connectivity through the restoration of corridors and protected areas would bolster elephants’ ability to migrate, access seasonal resources, and maintain genetic diversity. These measures would not only benefit elephants but also contribute to the broader health of ecosystems that support other wildlife and human communities.

A critical consideration in policy discussions is the alignment of funding with long-term ecological and social benefits. De-extinction projects, by their very nature, operate on time scales that often exceed typical policy cycles, requiring sustained commitments across multiple administrations and funding streams. In contrast, well-designed conservation programs can deliver incremental, measurable gains within a few years to a decade, informing adaptive governance and future strategies. The risk of misalignment is real: if heavy capital is funneled into speculative biology while foundational conservation needs remain underfunded, the net outcome could be stagnation or even deterioration of living ecosystems and the communities depending on them.

This is not a call to dismiss scientific ambition or to reject innovation. It is a plea for prudence in aligning ambition with evidence, ethics, and practical impact. If Colossal or any other entity seeks to contribute meaningfully to climate and biodiversity goals, there are credible, verifiable pathways that avoid the potentially severe costs of de-extinction. Replacing speculation with targeted investments in elephant conservation, ecosystem restoration, and climate-smart biotech applications could yield more certain benefits for climate resilience, biodiversity, and human well-being. The overarching question remains: should the conservation enterprise prioritize the allure of resurrecting a distant ancestor, or should it ground its decisions in accessible evidence, demonstrable welfare standards, and tangible, scalable conservation outcomes?

A Pragmatic Framework for Conservation: Evidence-Based Priorities and Ethical Governance

In light of the ecological uncertainties, welfare questions, and financial realities, a pragmatic framework for conservation emerges. This framework centers on actionable priorities with robust evidence, transparent governance, and ongoing evaluation. It emphasizes protecting living elephants and their habitats, strengthening human-wildlife coexistence, and leveraging responsible biotech innovations in a way that yields measurable environmental and social benefits.

Key components of this framework include:

  • Evidence-driven decision-making: Conservation policies should be anchored in robust, location-specific science. This means prioritizing interventions with demonstrated ecological benefits and clear, measurable climate co-benefits. When evidence is ambiguous or contested, decisions should err on the side of precaution and direct care for living ecosystems and communities.

  • Welfare-centered governance: Any intervention involving sentient mammals must incorporate rigorous animal welfare standards, independent oversight, and continuous welfare monitoring. The interests and well-being of individual animals should be integral to the planning, implementation, and evaluation of conservation actions.

  • Realistic funding and impact: Resources should be directed toward interventions capable of delivering near-term, verifiable gains. This includes habitat restoration, corridor connectivity, anti-poaching measures, human-elephant conflict mitigation, and community-based conservation programs that align ecological and social objectives.

  • Ethical stewardship of biotechnology: Biotechnology should be pursued in ways that minimize suffering and avoid unintended ecological disruption. This means evaluating not only the potential climate or biodiversity benefits but also the ethical, ecological, and social risks that technology may carry when applied at large scales.

  • Complementary approaches to climate resilience: In parallel with habitat and species conservation, invest in climate-smart agricultural practices, carbon sequestration research, and sustainable food systems that reduce pressure on wildlife habitats. These avenues can provide meaningful climate benefits without the ethical and ecological uncertainties associated with de-extinction.

  • Transparent public engagement: Maintain open dialogue with communities, scientists, policymakers, and stakeholders about goals, uncertainties, risks, and trade-offs. Public accountability and shared decision-making help ensure that conservation pathways reflect shared values and priorities.

  • Incremental progress with measurable milestones: Break down ambitious objectives into actionable steps with concrete milestones. Regular reporting, independent review, and adaptive management enable learning, correction, and continued improvement over time.

If there is a legitimate role for biotechnology in conservation and climate action, it should be framed within this rigorous, ethically guided structure. Rather than pursuing a spectacle of resurrecting extinct species, the most prudent course may lie in leveraging biology to protect and restore living ecosystems, improve habitat connectivity, and build resilience against climate change. That is not an argument against scientific innovation; it is a call to ensure that innovation serves clearly defined conservation objectives and the welfare of all beings involved.

Conclusion

The mammoth de-extinction enterprise, as narrated by Colossal Biosciences and its proponents, sits at the intersection of scientific possibility, ecological imagination, and ethical complexity. It captivates the public and investors with the prospect of restoring a vanished era while promising climate and biodiversity gains that are appealing in theory but unsettled in practice. The ecological evidence surrounding trophic cascades, seed dispersal, and carbon dynamics in modern ecosystems remains ambivalent, context-dependent, and not readily generalizable to Arctic grasslands inhabited by hypothetical or hybrid mammoth-like animals. The ethical landscape is equally intricate: using surrogate elephants in reproductive experiments and managing lab-born organisms raises poignant questions about animal welfare, the limits of human intervention, and the long-term welfare consequences for any beings created in laboratories or kept in captivity.

Moreover, the financial calculus raises serious questions about opportunity costs. In a world where conservation budgets are stretched thin, directing billions toward a speculative project that rests on complex ecological justifications risks diverting essential resources away from proven, near-term strategies that protect living elephants, safeguard habitat, and reduce human-wildlife conflict. The Indian context illustrates the scale of the challenge and the real-world potential for measurable improvements through established conservation channels—improving habitat connectivity, implementing adaptive conflict mitigation strategies, developing equitable compensation frameworks, and employing advanced monitoring technologies. Open questions about how to allocate scarce resources ethically and effectively are not mere academic concerns; they have real consequences for elephants’ survival, ecosystem function, and the health of human communities that share landscapes with wildlife.

If the ultimate aim is to advance climate resilience and biodiversity, the evidence suggests focusing on practical, ethically grounded, and wildlife-friendly interventions that yield verifiable outcomes. This does not close the door on scientific exploration; rather, it channels curiosity toward initiatives with clearer, faster, and more defensible benefits for living ecosystems. The mammoth project, as compelling as its narrative may be, should be examined through a rigorous lens of evidence, ethics, and pragmatic conservation. Only by centering welfare, measurable impact, and prudent use of resources can the conservation enterprise hope to address the urgent challenges of climate change and biodiversity loss in a manner that honors both the living world and the moral responsibilities we bear toward it. The question that remains for policymakers, researchers, and the public is stark: should conservation be a stage for speculative spectacle, or a disciplined, evidence-driven enterprise that yields real, lasting benefits for elephants, other species, and the climate we all share?

Notes on the author

The views expressed reflect the professional perspective of Nitin Sekar, who previously served as the national lead for elephant conservation at WWF India and is a member of the Asian Elephant Specialist Group within the IUCN Species Survival Commission. The analysis presented here is his own interpretation and synthesis of ecological, ethical, and policy considerations surrounding de-extinction debates and the Colossal initiative.