Ami Vitale: evaluation

Transcript context

…More to come. Well, when I first heard about the story to bring back these extinct species, I thought it was a waste of money and insane. Then I actually met people from the Colossal Project, and I’ve really changed my thinking on this. In some cases, I don’t know that they’ll get there in our lifetime, but they have a really good argument for the woolly mammoth. They believe that bringing species back to landscapes where they’ve been gone can serve a function in the same way bringing wolves back to Yellowstone is. It restores the ecosystem and restores that balance that is missing. They believe that by bringing the woolly mammoth back, they will churn up that soil and serve in the way that bison served in the landscapes here in Montana. The same thing happened. I’ll explain that a little more — you need to keep that land healthy. When you don’t have the hooves and the animals grazing and working that landscape, it actually starts to suffer. You need all these animals to create a healthy ecosystem. When you take out the keystone species, the whole land starts to suffer, and it trickles down to all the different species. Their thinking is, by bringing the woolly mammoth back, it’s going to restore the landscape. I actually think they have a much more interesting function as a company. They actually are working with species that are close to extinction but are still here. For example, they’re teaming up with a northern white rhino in the BioRescue project. By basically adding genetic diversity back to the embryos that they’ve created, the BioRescue project has created 29 viable embryos, and they’ll use southern white rhino surrogates to restore these species. They only have two northern white rhino females alive, and they’re using just one female — her eggs — to create these embryos. They need more genetic diversity, and Colossal is able to go into museum specimens and add genetic diversity. Taking this, I think that they have a really important value, and whether woolly mammoths are brought back — maybe it will happen in a hundred years from now. I don’t know if we’ll see this in our lifetime. Maybe we will, but I think that there’s value more for the species that are currently here. We need to help these keystone species because, actually, I’ve seen it. I’ve seen environments — I work a lot in northern Kenya, and there are landscapes where keystone species have been locally extinct for about 30 years, and you really see how it starts to impact the entire ecosystem. Then I’ve seen the reverse, where they brought back these animals to these ecosystems, and it’s amazing how resilient nature is when they give it a chance. You bring it back. We’ve seen examples in Yellowstone, in northern Kenya, when they brought rhinos and elephants back to these landscapes. Literally within five, ten years, you start to see the whole environment start to heal. For example, elephants tread up that grass. They’re like huge mobile composting units. back to these landscapes. Literally within five, ten years, you start to see the whole environment start to heal. For example, elephants tread up that grass. They’re like huge mobile composting units. The grass starts to grow and other species return. Then it’ll ultimately help human beings. I see all of us. I think that’s the main thing — how do we start to see that we are part of this beautiful web and that every piece matters? Back to Stewart and his work with Colossal — I see a value in it. I was very suspicious because very often people use these headlines to get attention, and you have to read through the headlines and really understand what is happening. In this case, I see some value there. Now, you have a movie on your homepage, which I would recommend to everyone, where you’re spending a lot of time photographing and filming rhinos. Why isn’t that more dangerous than it seems to be?…

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