Jackson has teamed up with United States-based Colossal Biosciences, with the Texan billionaire behind the company even putting a timeline on its return.
“I’m confident this will be under a decade,” chief executive Ben Lamm said.
Yet zoology Professor Emeritus Philip Seddon from the University of Otago, earlier this week said he was sceptical.
“Extinction really is forever. There is no current genetic engineering pathway that can truly restore a lost species, especially one missing from its ecological and evolutionary context for hundreds of years,” he said.
Others, such as senior curator of natural history at Canterbury Museum – which holds the largest collection of moa remains in the world – Paul Scofield, are more optimistic Scofield said he hopes to eventually have an ecological reserve on Ngāi Tahu land for moa.
Just for scale, the moa species in question was the biggest of them all. Adult females (much larger than males) stood up to 3.6m high at the back, and could reach foliage many metres off the ground.
Its fame and size briefly afforded it the status of national symbol in the 19th century.
The moa’s only threat was the giant Haast’s eagle, pouākai.
It’s thought they were later hunted to extinction just a couple of centuries after the first humans arrived, with moa bones and remains not dated later than about 1550.
The first mention of its unlikely revival was from former Labour MP Trevor Mallard in 2014.
To much ridicule from his colleagues, he famously suggested moa could one day be roaming the Remutaka Forest Park above Wainuiomata again. Sir John Key, Prime Minister at the time, replied there were already a few moa in the Labour caucus.
Since then, the conversation has been taken more seriously and has moved from “could we” to “should we”.
Professor Mike Stevens, director of the Ngāi Tahu Research Centre, admits the bold scheme might provoke debate, with some potentially questioning whether those behind the scheme are “playing God”.
Similar ethical deliberations played out in the script of Jurassic Park.
Namely, there’s a major difference between “de-extincting” a species that was lost due to human hunger, plumage collecting or habitat destruction (think moa, huia), and reintroducing a species that was lost due to the planet’s natural vagaries (think dinosaurs).
If the moa’s fate was authored by our species, albeit inadvertently, that presents a stronger argument to haul it back.
Whether the birds’ ecosystem in its denuded modern-day state could support it, who knows.
But how marvellous would it be to witness the big bird’s rise from the middens, thrown back into the mix 500 years after it left.
Once re-established, its towering presence may just see it reclaim the reign as national symbol.
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