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For Earth Day 2026, Colossal Biosciences Chief Animal Officer and Colossal Foundation Executive Director Matt James sat down with ScreenRant to move the spotlight from the company’s headline de-extinction work — dire wolves, the woolly mammoth, the giant moa — to the growing list of living species already benefiting from the technology that de-extinction has produced (ScreenRant, April 22, 2026).
A Conservation Toolkit Built for a Slower Crisis
Scientists estimate that species are currently disappearing at a rate roughly 100 times faster than the natural background rate before human activity began reshaping ecosystems (Ceballos et al., Conservation Biology, 2015, link), and the IUCN currently lists more than 48,000 species as threatened (IUCN Red List). That pace, James told ScreenRant, is the core of the problem: the conservation toolkit built over the last half-century was not designed for it.
“The tools are good,” James said. “They’re just not built for the speed of what’s happening right now” (ScreenRant, April 22, 2026). “The tools we’re building for the mammoth are directly applicable to living endangered species today.”
An mRNA Vaccine That Is Already Saving Young Elephants
In partnership with Dr. Paul Ling at Baylor College of Medicine and the Houston Zoo, Colossal helped fund and accelerate the world’s first mRNA vaccine for elephant endotheliotropic herpesvirus (EEHV), the leading cause of death in young Asian elephants in managed care (Wikipedia summary). In spring 2025, two vaccinated young elephants at the Cincinnati Zoo — Sanjay and Kabir — were naturally exposed to the virus and recovered fully. Five U.S. zoological institutions are now administering the vaccine, with more than ten elephants immunized (Colossal Foundation 2025 Impact Report; Dallas Innovates, Dec. 2025).
“A functional vaccine doesn’t just save individual animals. It changes the demographic trajectory of the managed population,” James told ScreenRant. “That’s a direct conservation impact, and it’s not hypothetical at this point” (ScreenRant, April 22, 2026).
Red “Ghost” Wolves and Recovered Genetic Diversity
Alongside the dire wolf work announced in April 2025, Colossal scientists cloned four red “ghost” wolves — Neka Kayda, Ash, Blaze, and Cinder — each carrying 69 to 72 percent red wolf ancestry, the highest red wolf genomic content ever recovered in a living animal. The effort also produced the first complete red wolf reference genome (Colossal Foundation 2025 Impact Report). With fewer than a handful of red wolves left in the wild and the roughly 300 under managed care descended from just 12 founders, the species is critically vulnerable. The first pup, Neka Kayda (“Ghost Daughter”), was named by the Karankawa Tribe of Texas and recognized as the tribe’s totem animal.
Listening to Wolves, Watching Elephants
Colossal’s AI-powered bioacoustic platform now underpins several field-conservation programs. In Yellowstone, the Foundation, Yellowstone Forever, and Grizzly Systems have deployed 48 autonomous recording units, fitted four wolves with the first-ever audio-logger collars, and are processing more than 200,000 hours of audio with AI models trained on 7,000 verified howls — the most detailed acoustic study of wild wolves ever conducted (Colossal Foundation 2025 Impact Report). In Samburu National Reserve, the Foundation’s partnership with Save the Elephants pairs thermal drones with Colossal’s machine-learning core to monitor African elephants from above. In Samoa, the same classifier is being used by the Samoa Conservation Society to listen for the critically endangered tooth-billed pigeon; the algorithm has identified the bird’s calls, but the species has not yet been rediscovered and the search is ongoing.
“We’re using it in Yellowstone National Park with gray wolves; we’re using it in Samburu National Park with African elephants; and we just deployed it to Samoa…” James told ScreenRant (ScreenRant, April 22, 2026).
James’s framing throughout the interview returns to one point: that de-extinction and conservation are not competing. “Those aren’t competing priorities,” he said of protecting species still here and recovering species already lost. “They’re the same mission at different points on the timeline” (ScreenRant, April 22, 2026). The full Earth Day interview is available on ScreenRant.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is functional de-extinction?
Functional de-extinction is the process of generating an organism that both resembles and is genetically similar to an extinct species by resurrecting its lost lineage of core genes, engineering natural resistances, and enhancing adaptability so the animal can thrive in today’s environment of climate change, dwindling resources, disease, and human interference (Colossal Biosciences).
How is de-extinction technology being used in conservation?
Tools developed through Colossal’s de-extinction work are being applied to an mRNA vaccine for elephant EEHV, genetic rescue of red “ghost” wolves, AI-powered bioacoustic monitoring of wolves in Yellowstone and elephants in Samburu, and programs to engineer disease and toxin resistance in amphibians and the Australian northern quoll (Colossal Foundation 2025 Impact Report; ScreenRant, April 22, 2026).
What are red “ghost” wolves?
Red “ghost” wolves are canids along the American Gulf Coast that carry genetic lineage from pre-extinction red wolves previously thought lost. In 2025, Colossal and its partners cloned four ghost wolves with 69–72 percent red wolf ancestry, the highest ever recovered, and generated the first complete red wolf reference genome (Colossal Foundation 2025 Impact Report).
Where can I read the original interview?
The Earth Day interview with Matt James appears in ScreenRant and can be read here.
