\u00a0Colossal did not wind up participating in the de-\u00adintrogression project. But the company is<\/em> doing work on the red wolf that \u00advonHoldt views as complementary: Its scientists are assembling a \u201cpangenome\u201d of North American canids by studying samples pulled from museums, universities, zoos, and other institutions. This data set is expected to clarify both what genetic sequences are shared across the entire canid family and what snippets differ in certain populations. The hope is that this will provide a clearer picture of the red wolf in its early days, before the coyotes arrived and the gene pool narrowed. That might shift what Colossal\u2019s James calls the government\u2019s arbitrary definition of the red wolf, to encompass more of the species\u2019 full former diversity.\u00a0<\/p>\n The pangenome, then, might allow vonHoldt\u2019s de-\u00adintrogressed canids, descended from the Gulf coast canids, to qualify as actual red wolves. Indeed, James suggested to me that more information about historic red wolves might force the government to take a new look at the Gulf Coast canids; some individuals might have high enough red wolf ancestry to be classified as <\/em>red wolves. (\u201cThat has management implications that terrify state and federal government,\u201d he added.)<\/p>\n TRISTAN SPINSKI<\/p>\n<\/figure><\/div>\n The purpose of vonHoldt\u2019s de-introgression project is to bring back certain lost red wolf genes\u2014to create a whole new wolf lineage. But she has also pushed against the idea of \u201cgenetic purity,\u201d which she thinks limits what we protect with conservation laws; she told me emphasizing it reminds her of the human history of eugenics and \u201cmakes every part of my soul hurt.\u201d She cares less about what species are out there, in the landscape, than what ecological function the animals play, and she sees coyotes and red wolves as closely related animals that may have a role to play in one another\u2019s future survival.<\/p>\n As for Colossal\u2019s clones, even vonHoldt seems to describe them as something less than a conservation breakthrough. They are a \u201cproof of principle that we, collectively, as a scientific community, know how to do it,\u201d she told me. If an urgent need arises to clone red wolves, the groundwork has been laid.\u00a0<\/p>\n Hinton, meanwhile, is one of several scientists I spoke with who were skeptical Colossal was doing good science, given that so much is conducted behind closed doors. He implied that the clones were nothing but an empty showpiece, a way to earn headlines and attract funders. \u201cThe work is anything but symbolic,\u201d James responded via e-mail. \u201cIt expands the genetic toolkit available for critically endangered species, demonstrates scalable approaches to biodiversity restoration, and contributes directly to preserving imperiled lineages.\u201d He noted that Colossal had intentionally decided to avoid the \u201csnail\u2019s pace\u201d of the peer review process and suggested that the skepticism from scientists may actually be a \u201cpanicked response to being outpaced.\u201d<\/p>\n Until some evidence confirms that the Gulf Coast canids\u2014the source material for the clones\u2014are red wolves, they can\u2019t legally be classified as such for federal conservation purposes. Nonetheless, Colossal\u2019s press release claimed that the company had \u201cbirthed two litters of cloned red wolves, the most critically endangered wolf in the world.\u201d On the same day that press release dropped, Colossal\u2019s CEO and cofounder, Ben Lamm, appeared on The<\/em> Joe Rogan Experience <\/em>and claimed that he had offered to create hundreds of red wolves for the federal government to use in recovery\u2014for free! He was miffed when the government, under the Biden administration, replied that it wanted to spend several years and many millions of dollars to study the potential<\/em> for cloning before it would take any action. (The company has gotten more traction with the Trump administration, Lamm said.)<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n #Colossal #Biosciences #cloned #red #wolves #real<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u00a0Colossal did not wind up participating in the de-\u00adintrogression project. But the company is doing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[6721,6722,6720,490,853,800],"class_list":["post-7379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories","tag-biosciences","tag-cloned","tag-colossal","tag-real","tag-red","tag-wolves"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/SCI-REDWOLVES_Spinski_241.jpg",1200,600,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/SCI-REDWOLVES_Spinski_241-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/SCI-REDWOLVES_Spinski_241-300x150.jpg",300,150,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/SCI-REDWOLVES_Spinski_241-768x384.jpg",640,320,true],"large":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/SCI-REDWOLVES_Spinski_241-1024x512.jpg",640,320,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/SCI-REDWOLVES_Spinski_241.jpg",1200,600,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/SCI-REDWOLVES_Spinski_241.jpg",1200,600,false],"covernews-featured":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/SCI-REDWOLVES_Spinski_241-1024x512.jpg",1024,512,true],"covernews-medium":["https:\/\/news678.top\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/SCI-REDWOLVES_Spinski_241-540x340.jpg",540,340,true]},"author_info":{"display_name":"admin","author_link":"https:\/\/news678.top\/?author=1"},"category_info":"Stories<\/a>","tag_info":"Stories","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news678.top\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"hair](\"https:\/\/wp.technologyreview.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/SCI-REDWOLVES_Spinski_188.jpg?w=2720\")
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