An USDA facility in Fort Collins is at the forefront of cryogenically preserving species so researchers can be prepared for the worst.
The goal is to save the genetic material of species in the Mountain West – like the Sonoran Pronghorn or the New Mexico Meadow Jumping Mouse – using new biotechnology.
Here’s how it works: Field biologists across the nation who are willing to participate are given a kit with instructions and tools needed to gather samples. Then, they punch out a 2- to 4-millimeter piece of ear tissue from a male and female of an endangered species and refrigerate it.
Once cell cultures are made from those tissues, they’re shipped off to the Agricultural Research Service in Fort Collins to be frozen for the future in big liquid nitrogen tanks.
Seth Willey is the Deputy Assistant Regional Director with U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s Southwest region, which aids the pilot project. He said this is one tool that could help in case a species goes extinct.
“If we don't do this today, then that door closes, that biodiversity is lost in the wild, there's no other option to get it back,” he said. “It's a little bit of an insurance policy that we hope we won't need to use.”
The idea for this pilot came from a successful cloning attempt of a black-footed ferret in 2020.
“That success was only possible because somebody 35 years ago or so, had the forethought to cryogenically preserve those samples,” Willey said. “So we started to ask the question, ‘Are we setting future biologists up in our region for the same type of opportunity?’”
They’re also trying to save species from what is known as the extinction vortex. When the population of an endangered species shrinks, there’s also a decrease in genetic variance when they breed, which can make them more susceptible to disease and extinction.
“When scientists know more about the health of those individuals that they are managing in the field, they can better ensure the health and viability of those populations,” said Ryan Phelan, the CEO of Revive & Restore, which helped kickstart the idea of the pilot project.
But it’s more than storing these tissues in the bank; they’re also being used for broader genetic sequencing research. Data about each species will be stored in GenBank, where scientists can see what genes contribute to the health of current surviving species and manage those populations better.
“They can look at genes that may be susceptible to disease, genes that can say these species will be able to adapt to warmer environments, and they can start to think about, ‘Well, we may need to translocate some of these species over time, further up the mountain or to a different range, both plants and animals,’” Phelan said.
This comes as more than 1,700 plants and animals in the United States are considered endangered or threatened, but less than 14% of the nation’s endangered plants and animals have cryopreserved samples.
The project started in January, and they’re currently only looking at mammals since they are easier to bank. It relies on the general recovery fund of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to operate, according to Willey.
Eleven species have been fully cryopreserved and six are in progress. Researchers hope to preserve a total of 25 species by early next year. Some of the other species they want to preserve in our region include the Mexican Wolf, the Texas Kangaroo Rat and the Ocelot.
When it comes to cryopreservation and even the potential for cloning species down the line, some critics think this is one step too far and that researchers are “playing God.” Phelan said that’s not the intent.
“There is every intent to preserve it as a legacy,” she said. “Just like we have National Archives, where we’re preserving our American literature in history, we should be preserving our natural heritage. It's a no-brainer, quite honestly.”
