The numbers that tell the story of American conservation are not encouraging. Since 1985, the list of species protected under the Endangered Species Act has grown by 300 percent. The money to protect them has not kept up.
The result, according to the math behind a new federal-private partnership, is that resources per species have been roughly cut in half. That gap is what the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and a biotech startup called Colossal Biosciences are now trying to address.
They plan to collect, sequence, and store genetic material from more than 2,300 threatened and endangered plants and animals. The project is being described as a DNA Noah’s Ark for America’s most vulnerable species. The scope is defined by the federal list.
America currently protects 1,662 domestic species and 638 foreign species under the 1973 Endangered Species Act. The new effort aims to cover all of them.
The work will be housed across Colossal’s distributed BioVault network, which will hold cryopreserved DNA, tissues, and reproductive cells alongside digitized reference genomes for each species. The Colossal Foundation, a nonprofit created by the company, is bankrolling the project. The foundation’s funding is listed as $1.
That is not a typo. The financial backing comes from Colossal’s broader private operations, though the company has not detailed the full budget for the work. Colossal is known as a “de-extinction” company.
It has drawn attention for its efforts to bring back the woolly mammoth. But this project is not about resurrection.
It is about preservation before loss. The goal is to create a permanent genetic record of species that are still alive but at risk. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Brian Nesvik framed the collaboration as a research tool.
“This collaboration will help advance our understanding of how biobanking and genomics can complement existing conservation tools,” Nesvik said in a statement. Colossal’s chief animal officer, Matt James, was more direct.
“This initiative will redefine conservation in the United States,” James said. “For the first time, we’re creating a permanent genetic record of America’s most vulnerable species before they’re lost.” The timing matters. The Endangered Species Act list has ballooned since the mid-1980s, but federal funding has not tracked that growth.
The Fish and Wildlife Service has had to spread its budget across more species, diluting what is available for each one. The new project does not replace that funding. It adds a layer of genetic insurance that the federal system alone has not provided.
Biobanking is not new. Zoos and seed banks have stored genetic material for decades.
What is new is the scale and the partnership. Colossal’s BioVault network is distributed, meaning samples will be kept in multiple locations. The reference genomes will allow researchers to compare genetic diversity across populations and, in theory, help guide breeding decisions or reintroduction efforts.
The project covers both plants and animals. The list of 2,300 includes species from across the country and around the world, since the Endangered Species Act protects foreign species as well.
The work will take years. Sequencing a single genome can be expensive and time-consuming. Storing tissues and reproductive cells requires liquid nitrogen and constant monitoring.
But the alternative is losing the genetic information entirely. Once a species is gone, its DNA is gone too. The project is an attempt to capture that data while it still exists.
It does not guarantee that the species will survive. It does mean that the genetic blueprint will not be lost.
The partnership is unusual. The Fish and Wildlife Service typically works with universities or nonprofit conservation groups, not with a for-profit biotech company that has de-extinction as its core mission. But the agency has been clear that this is a complementary effort, not a replacement for habitat protection or other on-the-ground conservation work.
For Colossal, the project builds credibility. For the Fish and Wildlife Service, it provides a tool it could not afford on its own.
For the species on the list, it offers a chance that their DNA will outlast the threats they face.
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