April 23, 2025
In the Harry Potter series (Rowling, 2015), Mirror of Erised captivates those who gaze into it, showing not reality, but their heart’s deepest wish, their most desperate desire. The name ‘Erised’ is ‘desire’ spelt backward. While it could offer comfort, it was also dangerous, as it could trap a person in an impossible fantasy (Rowling, 2015). For some scientists and conservationists, the dire wolf, a formidable predator extinct for roughly 10,000 years, manifests such a desire: to undo the past and restore a lost icon (Perri et al., 2021). Popularised by Game of Thrones and fossil records from the Pleistocene, the dire wolf has recently captivated our imagination as a symbol of a wilder, untamed world. But, as Harry learned in the fictional series, chasing desires can cloud one’s judgment.
De-extinction by Colossal Biosciences, the idea of reviving extinct species through genetic engineering is gaining traction (Seddon, 2017), technology like CRISPR and cloning fuel optimism about recreating creatures like the dire wolf (Perri et al., 2021). However, many conservationists argue that such efforts are poorly justified, diverting resources from species teetering on the brink (Seddon, 2017). Conservation, a complex interplay of science, politics, and policy, demands critical reassessment of the resources devoted to sustaining nonviable populations in an era of finite capital and urgent ecological priorities (Bennett et al., 2017; Echeverri et al., 2018). Beyond funding debates, there is a deeper issue: a flawed understanding of how species and ecosystems intertwine. Ecosystems are not static backdrops but dynamic, self-sustaining networks where species play roles shaped by centuries (Carpenter et al., 2001). Harbouring the desire to revive dire wolves risks ignoring this complexity, much like wielding the Resurrection Stone in Harry Potter without grasping its curse (Rowling, 2015). In this article, I explore why such attempts to resurrect the dire wolf may reflect our ‘superlative desires’ masquerading as conservation concerns (Pak, 2016). I argue that unwarranted allocation of effort and limited resources may rather imperil the living world.
Ecosystems are the living fabric of nature: self-sustaining units where species, their abiotic environments, and communities of viable populations interweave (Levin, 2005). In living nature, whose expression extends from forests like those of the Indian western Ghats to tropical cities with their infrastructure, viable populations are tied in clockwork, playing unintended roles in what appears like a balanced symphony. In reality, it is a beautiful chaos (Flake, 2000; Gleick, 1998). Despite significant advances in understanding the biosphere, current assessments indicate that more than 80% of the species on the planet remain uncatalogued (May 1988; Mora et al., 2011). Consequently, the unprecedented rate of loss of biodiversity caused by human activities within a compressed time frame restricts the interconnectedness and sustainability of diverse ecosystems. This is particularly significant in tropical regions of the developing world, which harbour the highest species concentration. People and experts, who wish to revive the extinct, undermine the fact that species do not exist in isolation; their ecology threads in a web, each contributing to a functional whole through their niche, a technical term for the role they play, from pollinating plants to controlling prey populations (Pocheville, 2015).
The dire wolf once roamed North America, a top predator shaping ecosystems by hunting megafauna like bison and keeping herbivore populations in check. Its extinction, likely driven by climate shifts and prey scarcity around 10,000 years ago, was not a singular event, but a ripple across its ecosystem where modern humans did not play an active role (Anonymous, 2025; Perri et al., 2021). This is totally unlike the massive plundering of species and their habitats by modern humans; arguably the (anthropogenic) sixth mass extinction (Mora et al., 2011). The writing was on the wall: changing environments reshaped the web and the dire wolf niche vanished. In Harry Potter’s magical realm, the dead cannot return unchanged; similarly, a species cannot reenter an ecosystem that no longer supports its role. Any dire attempts at such forced introductions would induce ecological disturbances across the hierarchical biological structure. For example, colonial settlements imported various plant species for aesthetic purposes, while numerous species were established in regions with no prior records. These intentional (e.g., Lantana camara and Eichhornia crassipes) and unintentional (.e.g, Parthenium hysterophorus) introductions of invasive species have significantly impacted existing ecosystems (Bhagwat et al., 2012).
Introducing a genetically engineered ‘dire wolf’ which, in reality, is a ‘genomically cosmetic’ grey wolf ignores this reality. Individuals don’t survive as museum pieces; they thrive through generations within dynamic communities. Deer survive in Central Indian forests (portrait bears resemblance to narratives such as The Jungle Book, which elucidates the survival mechanisms: eat to be eaten) because they graze on grass and are preyed on by tigers (Kipling et al., 1926). Direct and unintended impacts on the affect and removal of these tied elements falter the (eco)system. A lab-crafted dire wolf, even if a genomic approximation, would lack the ecological context, prey, competitors, and climate, that defined its existence. Colossal Biosciences officials and some experts have recently advocated for ambitious conservation initiatives, positing that the de-extinction of key umbrella/flagship species could stimulate financial support for extensive habitat rewilding projects (Novak, 2018). However, the necessity of resurrecting extinct species is questionable given the multitude of extant counterparts facing imminent threats to their populations. Like Harry’s parents appearing as mere shades in The Deathly Hallows, such creatures would be a hollow echo, not a living part of the fabric of nature.
De-extinction advocates used genetic tools to “rebuild” the dire wolf by editing grey wolf DNA to mimic Canis dirus. But this cosmetic creation that brings Jurassic Park to fiction to life is far from a resurrection (Spielberg et al., 1993). Natural Selection is the mechanism through which genomic architectures are shaped in response to reproductive success within a dynamic ecosystem of interacting species. In nature, survival is not about the choicest individuals, like the dire wolves depicted in cages; it is about how self-sustaining populations operate the biogeochemical cycle and the web of connected life forms (Darwin, 1859). To that end, dire wolf lookalikes, lacking their original prey or competitors, would be an ecological orphan.
Approaches to carving morphological semblance mirror anthropocentric tendencies to impose our will on nature, often with disastrous results (Marques & Marques, 2020). Human origin and dispersal, and colonial control across multiple continents, are fraught with examples of species introduced to suit nonnative needs (Buckley & Catford, 2016). There are countless examples of species introduced in nonnative areas, such as the intentional introduction of elephants Elephas maximus and chital Axix axis and the unintended invasion of the Indian bull frog Hoplobatrachus tigerinus in Andaman and Nicobar Islands in South Asia (Mohanty et al., 2016; Mohanty & Measey, 2019). Invasive species such as lantana, native to Mexico, have spread to more than 60 countries and their spread has impacted the world for more than 200 years (Bhagwat et al., 2012); so much for the hedge introduced for ornamental beauty. Proposed reintroduction strategies involving laboratory-designed dire wolves (species ghosts) and analogous organisms not only challenge the allocation of finite resources, but also raise concerns regarding their potential competitive interactions with extant predators, such as gray wolves or coyotes, already facing challenges in ecosystems ill equipped for novel species introductions. Given that the ecological niche occupied by free-ranging domestic dogs continues to limit resources available to other canids globally, contemporary ungulate populations are constrained, thus restricting the carrying capacity for existing large-bodied predator populations (Vanak & Gompper, 2009). Colleagues have argued that before harbouring and executing plans to resurrect predators (Coulson, 2025), the ecological logic warrants focus on building the prey base in their habitats. Deviations could destabilize food webs, pushing existing species further toward decline.
The notion of de-extinction as ‘genetic art’ challenges what Nobel laureate Peter Medawar called science: the art of the soluble (Medawar, 2008). Scientific methods address tangible challenges, such as conserving endangered gharial in South Asian River systems (Khadka et al., 2022; Nair et al., 2012) and the critically endangered Great Indian Bustard (GIB) in Indian savannahs through captive breeding programs and habitat preservation efforts in their native regions (Jangra & Verma, 2024). Crafting a dire wolf might satisfy curiosity or ego, but it sidesteps the ecological truth: species are defined by relationships, not just genes. A dire wolf without its Pleistocene context is a mere shadow of ecological reality, with largely uncharted dynamics. Why divert effort to species ghosts when the living need us more, when the increasingly well connected human world still lacks basic conceptualisation of its actions in nonhuman life forms (McCallum, 2015; Mora et al., 2011)?
While de-extinction experiments by Colossal Biosciences capture headlines (Anonymous, 2025), the GIBs teeter on the edge of extinction, with fewer than 150 individuals left due to habitat loss, electrocution, and predation by free-ranging dogs in roughly 800,000 km2 of South Asia (Dutta et al., 2011). Globally, the IUCN Red List reports more than 17,000 species at risk from global change (Boonman et al., 2024). Conservation resources—time, money, expertise—are finite. Every dollar spent on dire wolf restoration is diverted away from protecting coral reefs, restoring wetlands, or combating poaching.
The extinction of dire wolf was a natural response to environmental changes. Humans, most likely, competed for the same prey base (megaherbivores), but without the availability of sophisticated arms and gunpowder that brought us several tragedies like the dodo. The rapid extinction of the dodo (Roberts & Solow, 2003) and the precipitous decline of South Asian vultures (Prakash et al., 2003) illustrate humanity’s capacity to dominate ecological niches. The potential investment in the revival of the former obscures the urgent need for conservation efforts with respect to the latter, where captive breeding programs offer a tangible opportunity to preserve these vital avian scavengers (Bowden, 2009). De-extinction attempts risk diverting us from urgent, solvable problems. For example, conserving leopard or wolf populations, which occupy vast global niches, requires significant investment in studying human-animal ecological interactions, protecting habitats, and mapping regional interactions to reduce human-wildlife conflicts (Bagchi, 2019; Ripple et al., 2014; Wolf & Ripple, 2016). Recently, wolves traversing the human-dominated Indo-Gangetic plains sparked widespread media and social uproar (Ahmad et al., 2025), exposing our limited preparedness for these species, which are likely ‘studying’ the human niche, witnessing complex regional social-ecological dynamics.
Moreover, de-extinction reinforces an anthropomorphic view: that we can “fix” nature by recreating what is lost, or by translocations that exhibit inadequate conceptualisation regarding the requisite habitat conditions for a viable population, unlike the recent success in the Panna Tiger Reserve (Dutta & Krishnamurthy, 2024). North America’s modern predators—wolves, cougars, bears—have filled roles once held by dire wolves (Shivik, 2014). Reintroducing lab-raised dire wolves and other extinct fauna could disrupt these adaptations. Ecosystems demonstrate remarkable resilience, often adapting to significant changes like extinctions or species introductions, even if the resulting system differs from its original state. While dire wolve will surely struggle in today’s environment without mammoths or abundant bison, ecosystems like Guam’s—despite the brown tree snake’s impact—continue to function, albeit in altered forms. Though we may not prefer these new ecosystems, they persist and operate in their own way. In India, efforts to conserve tigers within human-use landscapes show that success lies in strengthening ecosystems, not attempts to rewrite history. By protecting native forests, we save tigers, deer, birds, and soils—a web of life shrined in their ecosystems (Jhala et al., 2021).
Investing in de-extinction also raises ethical questions (Cohen, 2014). Who decides which species return? Why the dire wolf and not the passenger pigeon, the moa or the dodo? Such choices reflect human biases, not ecological needs. An alternative approach, with proven success, involves reintroducing ecologically similar species to restore lost ecosystem services. For example, Aldabra giant tortoises, introduced to Mauritius’ Round Island, have effectively replaced extinct tortoises, grazing vegetation and dispersing seeds to revive the island’s ecosystem (Arnold, 1997). Such strategies prioritise ecological function over nostalgic revival, offering practical solutions grounded in current realities. There are countless examples of top predators and megaherbivores coming into conflict with local communities that have been studied to value wildlife, such as lions in Africa (Western et al., 2019) and elephants in Assam (Barua, 2010). Beyond abstract conservation ideals, there is a dire need to focus on new benchmarks for co-existence that could incorporate traditional knowledge into contemporary eco-literacy (Gupta & Kumar, 2024). Conservation should prioritise these connections, ensuring co-existence in shared spaces and not chasing mirages in the heat of the ongoing biodiversity crisis.
The allure of dire wolf resurrection forces us to confront our place as a species that harbours immortality and visualises life after death across multiple religious and cultural identities. South Asian communities have historically incorporated nonhuman entities into their pursuit of afterlife goals, providing food to various opportunistic scavengers and, therefore, modifying regional ecological networks (see Gupta & Kumar, 2024; Kumar et al., 2018, 2019). Like Harry before the Mirror of Erised, we see what we want: mastery over life and death. But as Dumbledore notes in the series, “It is not good to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” Humanity’s track record in creating self-sustaining ecosystems is poor: consider failed attempts to terraform Biosphere 2 (Cornelius, 2021), the dream of inhabiting deserts, or aspirations to colonize Mars, which remain speculative. If we cannot yet build basic functional units of living ecosystems, how can we justify reconstructing extinct ones?
The dire wolf story invites introspection. Our selection pressures, urban sprawl, deforestation, and anthropogenic climate change, drive modern extinctions. Instead of reviving the past, we should use science to secure the future. Tools such as genetic sequencing can improve the resilience of endangered and endemic species, as seen in efforts to save the Nilgiri tahr in India (Kanagaraj et al., 2023). Profound questions about life on Earth demand sustainable co-existence, not pipe dreams. In nature, extinction reshapes ecosystems, and we must protect what remains.
In conclusion, I urge choosing the living world instead of the dead. Resurrecting the dire wolf is like looking into the mirror of Erised, trying but perilous. Fragile ecosystems warrant changes to (patronising) human dominance that does not prioritise charisma of top predators, i.e. cultural salience, over the ecological salience of population viability of prey. The nostalgia of curating select individuals should give way to securing the conservation cards in hand. Let us invest in living species, weaving a future where humans and nature co-exist sustainably, rather than chasing ghosts that may have unintended consequences for the web of life.
For any queries or correspondence regarding this whitepaper, please write to Dr. Nishant Kumar over either of these e-mails – [email protected] | [email protected]
