The controversial quest to bring back the Tasmanian tiger

The Tasmanian tiger is alive. Not literally alive—there hasn’t been a verified sighting of Australia’s iconic marsupial predator for close to a century—but alive in imagination, in memory, in cultural recognition, and in collective regret over its extinction.

Alive, too, in the quest of a handful of scientists and entrepreneurs to “de- extinct” the species and bring it back to the wild.