Blog | Revive & Restore

Mar 03 2021

How the Black-footed Ferret Project Began—Thinking Outside The Box

By Heather Sparks Black-Footed Ferret

It was in 2013 that Seth Willey, a regional recovery coordinator with the US Fish And Wildlife Service, contacted Revive & Restore with the following email. You never know how impactful ideas may become, so always send that email! From: Seth Willey Sent: Tuesday, June 18, 2013 9:20 AM To: Ryan Phelan, Stewart Brand Subject: Outside the box question Hello Ryan Phelan and Stewart Brand, My name is Seth Willey. I work for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Endangered Species program. I understand through media reports that your organization is working to revive lost species and conserve existing ones....

Jan 11 2021

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Wild Genomes: Conservation Genomics Of New Zealand’s Largest Flightless Rail

By Heather Sparks Wild Genomes

This post is written by Dr. Lara Urban, PI for the takahē project, as part of our Wild Genomes banking and sequencing program. Fieldwork to count the number of wild takahē takes place in the remote Murchison Mountains where the species was rediscovered in 1948. A blood sample is taken from the takahē chick “Kohika.” Her DNA will serve as the basis of the reference genome. Kohika means "ancestor" in Māori, a name that acknowledges her important role in the conservation of the entire species. A party of juvenile takahē. Blood samples of the 84 to-be-sequenced individuals were collected in...

Nov 03 2020

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Genetic Rescue Is Huge For De-Extinction, But Not For The Reasons You Think

By Heather Sparks Uncategorized

This post was written by James Osborne, on his blog, A Mammoth Task. On August 6th, 2020, a male foal called Kurt was born at the San Diego Zoo. Kurt is a Przewalski’s horse, and he is a clone. The once desperately endangered subspecies of horse - spectacularly recorded by the artists of the palaeolithic - has been under the looming threat of extinction since it was first scientifically categorised in the 19th century. In the 1960s the subspecies became extinct in the wild as the last of its dwindling population was confined to breeding programmes in captivity. The worry...

Jul 02 2020

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An Interview with Ryan Phelan: Using Biotechnology to Revive Endangered Species and Restore Damaged Ecosystems

By alaniz admin COVID-19, Horseshoe Crab

COVID-19 Vaccines and the Harvesting, Bleeding, and Killing of Horseshoe Crabs This article was published on July 01, 2020. Access the original PDF, here. Wilson Sonsini attorneys Vern Norviel and Charles Andres recently sat down with Ryan Phelan of Revive & Restore (R&R). R&R is using 21st-century biotechnology (including genomics, high throughput sequencing, and synthetic biology) to address urgent conservation challenges. One issue that is particularly pressing is the harvesting and bleeding of horseshoe crabs, a threatened keystone species, and the source of Limulus amebocyte lysate (LAL). LAL, obtained from the blood of horseshoe crabs, is employed in pharmaceutical manufacturing...

Jun 10 2020

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#shutdownSTEM and a call for greater diversity in conservation

By Heather Sparks Uncategorized

In support of today’s #shutdownSTEM/#shutdownAcademia movement, the Revive & Restore team took the opportunity to spend the better part of the day reflecting upon what our organization can do to better enable racial diversity in our conservation activities. We identified 3 key areas where Revive & Restore can improve. We are making a commitment to: Broaden the diversity of those involved in our listservs Seek out conservation efforts led by people of color and encourage them to apply to our Catalyst Science Fund Plan future workshops to include a greater mix of people of color and monitor our progress We...

Jun 01 2020

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A Coalition Forms to Save the American Horseshoe Crab

By Heather Sparks Horseshoe Crab, Uncategorized

The Horseshoe Crab Recovery Coalition aims to stem years of decline that threatens this iconic creature as well as the shorebirds and fish that depend upon them. Bernardsville, NJ, June 1, 2020: There is a crisis facing horseshoe crabs and the fish and birdlife that depend on the crab’s eggs to survive. To raise public awareness, seek legislative and regulatory reforms and encourage the adoption of an already available synthetic alternative to the use of horseshoe crab blood in biomedical testing, a coalition of leading conservation groups and businesses has formed a new partnership known as the Horseshoe Crab Recovery...

May 21 2020

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Migration Numbers Plummet for Imperiled Shorebird on New Jersey’s Delaware Bayshore

By Heather Sparks Horseshoe Crab

Veteran biologist sees unprecedented declines in red knots — and in horseshoe crabs. In the photo above, just two red knots and two horseshoe crabs gather at Cooks Beach, New Jersey on May 18, 2020. This article originally appeared in NJSpotlight on May 19, 2020, written by Jon Hurdle. At the mouth of a creek near Pierces Point, an isolated beach community on the New Jersey side of the Delaware Bay, Larry Niles spotted only two red knots on Monday morning, in the same place that he saw some 17,000 of the shorebirds during their spring migration a year ago….

May 08 2020

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Self-isolation’s Silver Lining

By Heather Sparks COVID-19

Written by Yolanda Van Heezik & Philip Seddon Both Yolanda Van Heezik & Philip Seddon are wildlife biologists in the Department of Zoology at the University of Otago, New Zealand. Originally posted on News Room, a New Zealand news site, adapted slightly by Revive & Restore. Are you waking to the sound of korimako (Anthornis melanura)? Do there seem to be many more piwakawaka (Rhipidura fuliginosa) flitting around your head as you potter about in the garden? What’s going on? Why do there seem to be so many birds around? With most of us still spending more time at home everything…

Apr 16 2020

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HUMAN NATURE: A FILM BRINGS CRISPR TO LIFE

By RandR ADMIN Biotechnology, Uncategorized

CRISPR/Cas9 has given scientists unprecedented control over the basic building blocks of life. It opens the door to curing diseases, reshaping the biosphere, and designing our own children. Now, a new documentary, titled Human Nature offers a provocative exploration of CRISPR’s far-reaching implications. The story is eagerly told by the scientists who discovered it, the families it affects, the doctors eager to use it, and the bioengineers who are testing its limits. How will this new power change our relationship with nature? What will it mean for evolution? To begin to answer these questions the film looks far back into…

Feb 24 2020

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The Audacious Experiment of Pleistocene Park

By RandR ADMIN Pleistocene Park, Revive & Restore, Woolly Mammoth

An artist's renderings of the mammoth steppe. Courtesy Pleistocene Park Foundation. Through the work spearheaded by one family, an ecosystem reengineering experiment is bringing new life to the Arctic. It's an effort to stop the thaw of permafrost and the impending, enormous release of its greenhouse gasses. Nearly 20,000 years ago, millions of woolly mammoths, bison, oxen, horse, and reindeer lived in the grassland steppe of northern Siberia. Today, the landscape is largely a barren tundra, a once-great grassland ecosystem ruined through hapless human activity. However, things are starting to change. In one corner of Siberia, Sergey Zimov and son...

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