Zealands

WASHINGTON — Filmmaker Peter Jackson owns one of the largest private collections of bones of an extinct New Zealand bird called the moa. His fascination with the flightless ostrich-like bird has led to an unusual partnership with a biotech company known for its grand and controversial plans to bring back lost species.

Last week, Colossal Biosciences announced an effort to genetically engineer living birds to resemble the extinct South Island giant moa — which stood 12 feet tall — with $15 million in funding from Jackson and his partner, Fran Walsh. The collaboration also includes the New Zealand-based Ngai Tahu Research Center.

“The movies are my day job, and the moa are my fun thing I do,” Jackson said. “Every New Zealand schoolchild has a fascination with the moa.”

Outside scientists say the idea of bringing back extinct species onto the modern landscape is likely impossible, although it may be feasible to tweak the genes of living animals to have similar physical traits. Scientists have mixed feelings on whether that will be helpful, and some worry that focusing on lost creatures could distract from protecting species that still exist.

The moa had roamed New Zealand for 4,000 years until they became extinct around 600 years ago, mainly because of overhunting. A large skeleton brought to England in the 19th century, now on display at the Yorkshire Museum, prompted international interest in the long-necked bird.

An artist’s depiction of the largest species of moa, the South Island giant moa, which could stand 12 feet tall.

(Colossal Biosciences via AP)

Unlike Colossal’s work with dire wolves, the moa project is in very early stages. It started with a phone call about two years ago after Jackson heard about the company’s efforts to “de-extinct” — or create genetically similar animals to — species such as the woolly mammoth and the dire wolf.

Then Jackson put Colossal in touch with experts he’d met through his own moa bone collecting. At that point, he’d amassed 300 to 400 bones, he said.

In New Zealand, it’s legal to buy and sell moa bones found on private lands, but not on public conservation areas — nor to export them.

The first stage of the moa project will be to identify well-preserved bones from which it may be possible to extract DNA, Colossal’s chief scientist, Beth Shapiro, said.

Those DNA sequences will be compared with genomes of living bird species, including the ground-dwelling tinamou and emu, “to figure out what it is that made the moa unique compared to other birds,” she said.

Colossal used a similar process of comparing ancient DNA of extinct dire wolves to determine the genetic differences with gray wolves. Then scientists took blood cells from a living gray wolf and used the CRISPR gene-editing tool to modify them at 20 sites. Pups with long white hair and muscular jaws were born late last year.

Working with birds presents different challenges, Shapiro said.

Unlike mammals, bird embryos develop inside eggs, so the process of transferring an embryo to a surrogate will not look like mammalian IVF.

“There’s lots of different scientific hurdles that need to be overcome with any species that we pick as a candidate for de-extinction,” Shapiro said. “We are in the very early stages.”

If the Colossal team succeeds in creating a tall bird with huge feet and thick pointed claws resembling the moa, there’s also the pressing question of where to put it, said Duke University ecologist Stuart Pimm, who is not involved in the project.

“Can you put a species back into the wild once you’ve exterminated it there?” he said. “I think it’s exceedingly unlikely that they could do this in any meaningful way.”

“This will be an extremely dangerous animal,” Pimm added.

The direction of the project will be shaped by Maori scholars at the University of Canterbury’s Ngai Tahu Research Center. Ngai Tahu archaeologist Kyle Davis, an expert in moa bones, said the work has “really reinvigorated the interest in examining our own traditions and mythology.”

At one of the archaeological sites that Jackson and Davis visited to study moa remains, called Pyramid Valley, there are also antique rock art done by Maori people — some depicting moa before their extinction.

The South Island giant moa at 12 feet tall would dwarf even the tallest humans.

(Colossal Biosciences via AP)

Paul Scofield, a project advisor and senior curator of natural history at the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch, New Zealand, said he first met the “Lord of the Rings” director when he went to his house to help him identity which of the nine known species of moa the various bones represented.

“He doesn’t just collect some moa bones; he has a comprehensive collection,” Scofield said.

Larson writes for the Associated Press. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Politicians typically don’t mind campaign documentaries, because a race is a road show and the camera is a practice run for the performance part of the gig. Having a lens on what postelection governance looks like, however, is a rarity in nonfiction, which makes “Prime Minister” something of a unicorn: an intimate view inside the consequential, galvanizing five-year administration of New Zealand’s progressive leader Jacinda Ardern, who also became a first-time mother simultaneous to taking her country’s highest seat of power.

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The point made by the filmmakers is that the job of looking after a country’s people — and the mix of love and steel required to personally care for a child — might just go hand in hand. We certainly know which looming responsibility triggered the most reluctance in Ardern, as early on we watch the special minority coalition circumstances in 2017 that thrust a then-37-year-old Ardern from opposition-party leader to prime minister in only two months.

For Ardern, an articulate spokesperson of heart and mind, it was an unexpected chance to effect change on a platform of issues that mattered to her. That opportunity was greater than any personal doubts she may have had, including a nagging sense of impostor syndrome. As she says, “I could only be myself.”

Which means: compassionate, wry and unbowed. Ardern was quick-witted enough to sparkle on Stephen Colbert and shrewd enough to pass effective climate change legislation and protect a woman’s right to choose. “Prime Minister” is not be that interested in wrangling, dealing and lawmaking, or even the nuts and bolts of her progressive views. (You crave more scenes of her debating — she seems especially strong at it.) But in the fleet, pacey manner of the editing, toggling between private and public moments with highlight-reel efficiency, the film is a stirring glimpse of top-down kindness as a winning leadership style. After the Christchurch tragedies, twin shootings that took 51 lives, she showed the most heartfelt empathy, then knuckled down and got assault weapons off the streets. Tears beget toughness.

Ardern is so appealing, her manner so purposeful despite her admitted anxieties, that her struggle to respond forcefully and humanely to the pandemic — then endure threatening protests fueled by American-grown disinformation — is hard to watch. She became a rageful minority’s easy target, exemplary COVID management statistics be damned. Stepping down in 2023, Ardern sacrificied power for her own sanity. (One wonders if 21st-century leadership is just too chaotic for thoughtful people — and only suited to megalomaniacs.)

“Prime Minister” is an essential political portrait in how it seeds optimism and concern, leaving you with hope that more Jacinda Arderns are in the wings ready to enshrine common sense, despite the risks. There’s no doubt that when it mattered most, her high-wattage sensitivity was a towering strength. As showcased in this film, it’s a precious resource we could use a lot more of.