Ghosts of extinction

‘Ghost species’ haunt the conservation imagination. From the Dodo to the Tasmanian tiger, conservationists look back with longing to animals that are gone, and tell and re-tell morality tales about the greed and lack of care that drove them to extinction.

Extinction is imagined as an edge towards which species are pushed by human action or inaction, and over which they fall, to disappear forever. And yet ghost species remain present, in spectral but powerful form. They lure conservationists to fix their gaze back to what is lost and being lost. But what would happen if we turned around and looked forwards?

In this talk, Bill explores the new science of de-extinction, proposing to bring species like the passenger pigeon or the wooly mammoth back from the museum and fossil record. If such ghosts can be conjured back to life, is there hope beyond extinction?