Credit: Wildcat78, Getty
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In a previous column, I described gene drive technology as the genetic equivalent of a nuclear bomb.
Gene drive is a naturally occurring or artificially engineered phenomenon in which a gene, or group of genes, acquires a greater than normal chance of being passed on to the next generation. With sufficiently enhanced heritability, the gene(s) will spread through a whole population within a few generations.
For instance, if gene drive techniques were used to create a bias to the production of male offspring, then the number of females in the target population would diminish with every generation – with knock-on consequences for the size of the next generation.
In theory, we could engineer the extinction of an entire species, but who would want to do a thing like that? The New Zealanders, that’s who.
In a fascinating piece for the Atlantic, Ed Yong reports from the frontline of a land war to rid New Zealand of eight species of predatory mammals:
“In recent years, many of the country’s conservationists and residents have rallied behind Predator-Free 2050, an extraordinarily ambitious plan to save the country’s birds by eradicating its invasive predators. Native birds of prey will be unharmed, but Predator-Free 2050’s research strategy, which is released today, spells doom for rats, possums, and stoats… They are to die, every last one of them. No country, anywhere in the world, has managed such a task in an area that big. The largest island ever cleared of rats, Australia’s Macquarie Island, is just 50 square miles in size. New Zealand is 2,000 times bigger. But, the country has committed to fulfilling its ecological moonshot within three decades.”
What has New Zealand got against mammals? The story begins before the year 1300, or thereabouts, when apart from bats, the islands were mammal-free due to their great distance from any other land mass. Over millions of years, this had allowed a unique ecosystem to evolve – one in which birds filled the ecological niches occupied elsewhere by mammals. For instance, instead of herbivorous mammals like antelope or kangaroo, there was the flightless moa – the biggest of which could reach 12 foot in height. And in place of apex predators like the lion or the wolf, there was Haast’s eagle1– the biggest eagle that’s ever lived (big enough to take down a moa).
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