Andrew Pask

We would strongly advocate that first and foremost we need to protect our biodiversity from further extinctions, but unfortunately we are not seeing a slowing down in species loss, this technology offers a chance to correct this and could be applied in exceptional circumstances where cornerstone species have been lost.

The technologies we are developing to de-extinct the thylacine all have immediate conservation benefits -- right now -- to protect marsupial species. Biobanks of frozen tissue from living marsupial populations have been collected to protect against extinction from fires, however, we still lack the technology to take that tissue -- create marsupial stem cells -- and then turn those cells into a living animal. That is the technology we will develop as a part of this project.