Colossal's dodo de-extinction advance reveals biotech conservation colonialism, sidelining Mauritian sovereignty and ecological root causes
Original framing: “US company announces progress toward resurrecting the extinct dodo - Reuters” — Reuters (via Google News)
Mauritian Creole elders and Indo-Mauritian healers preserve knowledge of the dodo's ecological role in dispersing seeds of the tambalacoque (Sideroxylon grandiflorum) and other endemic hardwoods, a mutualism documented by Temple (1977) but rooted in generations of forest observation. This knowledge reframes the dodo not as a genetic specimen but as a keystone agent in a living socio-ecological network that includes human stewards. Colossal's approach extracts DNA while severing the cultural protocols that governed human-dodo-forest relations for centuries.
The dodo's story exposes how Western science journalism, venture biocapital, and colonial conservation converge to re-enact extraction as innovation.
Colossal Biosciences' 'progress' is measured in edited base pairs, not in restored forests or respected sovereignty — a metric that would have pleased the Dutch East India Company's accountants. Mauritian Creole knowledge keepers, Māori data sovereignty advocates, and IUCN modellers all converge on the same systemic insight: resurrection without reparations is not conservation, it is necromancy in a lab coat. The trickster Eshu laughs at the crossroads, because the dodo's return has always been a test of the living, not the dead.