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March 16, 202312:10 AM ET

By 

Aaron Scott

, 

Thomas Lu

, 

Gabriel Spitzer

, 

Berly McCoyLISTEN· 11:51

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The Summers Place Dodo skeleton dates from around the 16th century.

Leon Neal/Getty Images

Beth Shapiro has been getting the same question ever since she started her research on ancient DNA, more than two decades ago.

“Whenever we would publish a paper, it didn’t matter what the paper was, what the animal was, how excited we were about the ecological implications of our results or anything like that. The only question that we consistently were asked was, how close are we to bringing a mammoth back to life?” she says.

Shapiro is a leading expert on paleogenomics and a Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of California Santa Cruz. As we explored in yesterday’s episode, she has been in the thick of the field’s recent big advances.

But she still gets that question – she even published a book to try to answer it.

“I wrote a book called How to Clone a Mammoth that was basically, you can’t,” she told Short Wave co-host Aaron Scott.

“Once a species is gone, once it’s extinct, it is not possible to bring back an identical copy of that species. But there are technologies that will allow us to resurrect extinct traits, to move bits and pieces of genes that might be adapted to a large animal like an elephant living in the Arctic.”

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That is exactly what companies like Colossal Biosciences and Revive and Restore are trying to do, with Beth’s help. Her hope is that the technologies these de-extinction companies are developing will have applications for conservation.

As Beth sets her sights on one major conservation priority, protecting vulnerable species of birds, she’s also leading the effort to resurrect another iconic animal — one she has a special relationship with.

“I happen to have a dodo tattoo,” she says.

In today’s episode we bring you the second part of our conversation with Beth Shapiro: How her initial work mapping the dodo genome laid the groundwork to bring back a version of it from extinction, and how the knowledge scientists gain from de-extinction could help protect species under threat now.

Beth Shapiro’s most recent book, Life As We Made It, explores how humans have been reshaping nature since the very beginning.

Listen to Short Wave on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Google Podcasts.

HB469 won’t just ‘manage’ cougars in Utah. It will exterminate them.

(Francisco Kjolseth | The Salt Lake Tribune) A 4-year-old female mountain lion slowly shakes off the effects of a sedative after researchers from Utah State University and the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources replaced her radio-collar afer being captured in the Oquirrh Mountains recently.

By Sundays Hunt | Special to The Tribune

  | March 13, 2023, 5:00 a.m.

| Updated: 10:05 a.m.

https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2023/03/13/sundays-hunt-bill-allow-cougar/

Comment

Utah has never exactly been a safe haven for cougars. In fact, hundreds of them are killed every year by trophy hunters here. But wording recently slipped into a seemingly innocuous state bill would turn Utah into a killing field for this carnivore species by allowing year-round trophy hunting and trapping of cougars by any resident or nonresident with a hunting license. Rushed through the Legislature, this bill now sits on Gov. Spencer Cox’s desk, awaiting his signature.

One would think that a bill with such dire implications would cause quite a commotion and it has — not merely from wildlife advocates but also from the hunting community.

The language expanding cougar hunting was added in an eleventh-hour amendment that was never heard before a committee and not subject to any input from the public. A seemingly innocuous bill was amended on the floor of the Senate and passed both chambers within two hours.

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The recreational trapping of cougars has long been prohibited — and for good reason. Cougar trapping is inherently cruel and will undoubtedly result in the non-target captures of both wildlife and pets, including working dogs on our public lands. In fact, it’s so awful that only two other states (Texas and Nevada) permit trapping cougars. A year-round season will also harm dependent kittens, leaving them vulnerable to death from starvation, predation and exposure.

If Cox signs this legislation, HB469, cougars will be caught using strangling wire neck snares and painful steel-jawed leghold traps. Animals caught in leghold traps suffer from torn flesh, cut tendons and broken bones, among other injuries. Snares are typically designed to kill through strangulation, but the animal can suffer for days if the snare is incorrectly deployed or irregularly checked.

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Hunters in Utah already kill more cougars every year than any other state. The levels of cougar hunting here have been documented by Utah’s cougar biologists as intemperate and unsustainable. In fact, were it not for new cougars coming into the state and a few refuges where hunting is not allowed, it’s likely there would be no Utah cougars at all.

In 2019, Utah’s Division of Wildlife Resources estimated the adult cougar population to be around 2,000 individuals. Yet 667 cougars were killed by trophy hunters in 2021 — a whopping 33% of the population. If trapping is added to the mix, it’s terrifying to think what impact that will have on Utah’s cougar population. HB469 won’t just “manage” cougars in Utah. It will exterminate them.

Cougars serve important ecological roles such as providing more carrion for other species than any other large carnivore, and they indirectly benefit beetles, foxes, birds and bears, thus enhancing biological diversity. A bill liberalizing the killing of this valuable species will have direct impacts on Utah’s ecosystem.

Apart from the harm this will cause to the cougar population and Utah’s ecosystems, increased killing will likely result in unintended consequences to Utah’s livestock producers, too (at least, until cougars are completely extirpated from the state). According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, only about 1% of cattle losses in Utah are from cougars. But random killing destabilizes cougars’ social structure, leading to more young and inexperienced cougars going into an area and potentially resorting to livestock as an easy meal.

Simply put, kill one resident male cougar, three inexperienced teenagers will show up to his funeral. HB469 blasts the door wide open to future conflict.

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According to the Division of Wildlife Resources, “We want to pass along our wildlife heritage to future generations, and we want it to be in better shape than when it was passed to us.”

If that’s true, the division should line up with the rest of us against HB469, which not only undermines that sentiment but also the sound ethical and scientific principles that should undergird our state’s wildlife management.