WHO SAYS THERE’S no good news? Colossal Biosciences, a Dallas-based company, announced the birth of three dire wolf pups that represent the world’s first “de-extinction.”

This is an effort to bring back a lost species that disappeared about 10,000 years ago.

Colossal used DNA from dire wolf fossils to reassemble the dire wolf’s genome using CRISPR, a gene-editing tool. Colossal modified 14 genes tied to the dire wolf’s physical traits, such as size, musculature and fur quality and color.

These genes were tweaked in 20 spots, transforming the gray wolf’s genome to more closely resemble that of its extinct cousin. The edited DNA was inserted in donor eggs taken from a domestic dog. The resulting embryos were then implanted in domestic dog surrogates.

Colossal plans to grow the dire wolf pack, but they will not let the wolves breed with one another.

Colossal Biosciences is also attempting to bring the woolly mammoth back from extinction! These large, hairy, elephant-like creatures were said to have gone extinct, along with mastodons, ground sloths and a host of other massive prehistoric creatures collectively known as “Pleistocene megafauna,” somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000 years ago.

Theories vary on perpetrators of this mass extinction, but the usual suspects include humans and climate change. Evidence of humans hunting these massive Pleistocene creatures can be found in Washington’s own Manis mastodon site located near Sequim, where the remains of bison and caribou were discovered along with a spear point found embedded in a mastodon rib 13,800 years ago. Making the site one of the earliest documented barbecues in North America.

Colossal Bioscience is also working on a plan to bring back the woolly mammoth. They hope to do this by genetically engineering cells from an Asian elephant into a creature with a furry coat and a fat layer that can survive in the Arctic. The company plans to release 100 woolly mammoths in the Arctic, where it is imagined they would combat climate change.

If this plan is successful, Colossal Bioscience hopes to de-extinct other creatures such as the Tasmanian tiger and the dodo bird. All of which begs the question, what will it do for fishing?

Washington state was once famous for its 100-pound Chinook salmon. These occurred in the Columbia and Elwha rivers. These giant Chinook were wiped out by the early 1900s by a combination of dams, irrigation and over-harvest. Efforts to restore the 100-pound salmon along with a host of other threatened or endangered species of fish in Washington have been a colossal, multi-billion-dollar failure.

A March 10, 2024, Seattle Times story reported that Washington state is spending a million dollars a day replacing culverts, many in streams that salmon cannot reach.

Then there’s the failed $351.4 million Elwha Dam removal experiment. Where Chinook are unable to reach their historic pristine spawning grounds due to rock slides and the unwillingness of the fisheries’ co-managers to introduce fertilized salmon eggs, juvenile and adult spawning Chinook into the upper watershed.

De-extincting the dire wolf and woolly mammoth will not restore our ecosystems. De-extincting the 100-pound salmon would restore our ecosystem. It would not require Colossal Bioscience’s de-extinction protocol.

Here’s an idea. Recently, a world-record 105-pound Chinook was caught in Chile! It’s ironic that the world-class Chinook salmon fishing in Chile was created by planting eggs from Washington state fish hatcheries into Chilean rivers back in the 1980s.

Maybe we could ask Chile if we could borrow some of their 100-pound salmon eggs and re-create their incredible salmon fisheries here in Washington.

We’ll thank ourselves later if we do the right thing now.

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Pat Neal is a Hoh River fishing and rafting guide and “wilderness gossip columnist” whose column appears here every Wednesday.

He can be reached at 360-683-9867 or by email via patnealproductions@gmail.com.