In a move stirring both scientific fascination and ethical debate, Colossal Biosciences—known for its (sometimes controversial) “de‑extinction” work—is teaming up with filmmaker Sir Peter Jackson and New Zealand's Ngāi Tahu people in a high‑profile bid to bring back the giant moa. Standing up to 3.6 m (12 ft) tall, these flightless birds were driven extinct around the 15th century by over‑hunting. The newly announced initiative aims to reconstruct a moa‑like bird using cutting‑edge gene‑editing and surrogate incubation techniques. 🧬 Background Colossal has already attracted global attention with its dire wolf and woolly mammoth programs. In early July 2025, the company revealed: Sir Peter Jackson and his wife Fran Walsh invested US $15 million , and Jackson contributed a collection of approximately 400 moa bones . The project is a collaboration with the Ngāi Tahu Research Centre to ensure cultural sensitivity and ecological awareness. The plan: extract ancient DNA from bone fragm...

 ✍️ Two Weeks, One Letter, and a Voice for the Seals For the past two weeks, my world has been wrapped up in one thing: writing a letter. Not just any letter, but the most important one I’ve ever written — addressed to the Prime Minister of Canada about the commercial seal hunt. I spent day after day shaping sentences, rewriting paragraphs, and trying to make sure every word carried both truth and compassion. It wasn’t homework or a school project. It was something I chose to do because I couldn’t ignore the images in my head — the seals on the ice, being shot from boats and having no clue why their friends suddenly collapsed and slid into the deepness of the ocean. All this pain has been hidden behind the label of “tradition.” Some nights I stayed up late, asking myself: Will anyone even listen? Will these seals get to bleed out and die in silence on the bottom of the ocean, forever?  But each time I doubted, I thought of the seals who don’t get to choose. Who can’t send l...