On a shrub-covered dune in San Francisco’s Presidio, biologist Durrell Kapan and a group of volunteers huddle around a tiny plastic condiment container placed delicately amid a cluster of orange-yellow flowers. Inside is a Silvery Blue butterfly whose inch-long wings beat sleepily, revealing its shimmering namesake hue as it sips on a cotton ball doused in fruit punch Gatorade.

Just over 80 years ago, Xerces Blue Butterfly last flapped its wings over the Presidio, becoming the first butterfly on the continent known to go extinct as a result of human activity. Now, by releasing this Silvery Blue – and over a hundred others over the past year — Kapan hopes there can be some sort of life after extinction, with these butterflies filling the role in the ecosystem that the Xerces once did.

De-extinction – the idea of bringing species back from beyond the brink or filling their role with surrogate creatures – has been an effort for decades. But last month, that idea burst into the popular consciousness when the stark white coats of “Dire wolves” (which some scientists say might be better described as genetically modified grey wolves) graced the covers of magazines across the world.  Led by a researcher from UC Santa Cruz, a group of scientists claimed to bring back the creature after it had been extinct for over 12,000 years.

“The idea of de-extinction is that it’s part of the spectrum of restoring lost species and ecological roles in environments,” said Ben Novak, lead scientist at the Sausalito-based conservation philanthropy Revive & Restore.

Both the wolf and the butterfly are part of a larger push by scientists and philanthropists across the Bay Area to bring back species from extinction or replace their roles in the name of conservation. While many in the movement say their work could be essential for preserving life on earth, some fear that use or abuse of these techniques could be a distraction — or worse, harm the very conservation cause they claim to fight for.

“We need new tools to address conservation problems – that’s essential,” said Ryan Phelan, co-founder of Revive & Restore, who helped create a nexus of researchers, ethicists, and conservationists interested in biotech and de-extinction. “These new tools need to be developed responsibly and with open transparency… No new technology today can replace the need to protect habitat.”

Biologists and conservationists largely agree that we are in the midst of a biodiversity crisis, a rapid loss in populations and widespread extinctions of animals, plants and other organisms across the globe fueled by human activity like habitat destruction, a changing climate, and pollution. While estimates vary, some studies suggest the planet is losing species at least 100 times faster than the “natural” rate we might expect.

As a species disappears from the environment, so too does its role in its habitat. For example, a group of grey wolves might keep the elk population in check. Without the wolves, elk might overgraze, chomping down on flora that would otherwise grow into food or roosts for other species.

“It’s like a Jenga stack. When a species goes extinct, you create a gap in that fragile structure. Life and ecosystems are a little bit like that,” said Douglas McCauley, a professor at UC Santa Barbara and UC Berkeley, who co-wrote ethical guidelines to de-extinction. “So what you want to do is you want to fill those blocks back in.”

For many in the Bay Area, rebuilding that Jenga stack is the goal of de-extinction: to release a group of animals that can fill in a key role in the environment and stabilize an ecosystem.

In 2020, Revive & Restore partnered with Kapan at the California Academy of Sciences to look into the genetics of the Xerces butterfly with an eye towards restoring it to the Presidio. Kapan and his collaborators investigated the DNA of the extinct Xerces and analyzed historical records of the butterfly’s behavior and habitat. Then they compared the genes and the environment to other species of butterfly and found the Silvery Blue, a butterfly out of California’s Central Coast with a similar penchant for foggy dunes and certain shrubs as the Xerces.

The butterfly might be able to serve as pollinator and prey like the Xerces, filling its empty role in the ecosystem. So over the last year, Kapan and his team captured over 100 Silvery Blues from Monterey County and brought them to the Presidio to release them.

Kapan calls the experiment a “test case of … what people are calling de-extinction,” allowing him and others to gain insight into what happens when you try to replace an extinct species with a new one.

De-extinction, though, has another side, fueled by 21st-century advances in genetics that rival science fiction.

“Habitats around the world are changing at a rate that is faster than evolution can keep up,” said UCSC biologist Beth Shapiro. “If we want a future that is both biodiverse and filled with people, we need to be increasing the tools at our disposal that allow us to help species … we need to directly modify (genes).”

Shapiro wrote the book on de-extinction, “How to Clone a Mammoth,” after becoming a world leader in extracting and deciphering DNA from ancient remains. She detailed the steps to creating a creature for de-extinction. In brief summation, she wrote: figure out the genes of an extinct creature, tweak the genes of a close relative so that it might have key traits of the extinct one, find a good surrogate mom, figure out how to raise it, and release it — ideally along with many of its kin — into the wild.

Then last year, Colossal Biosciences, a biotech startup dedicated to de-extinction, tapped Shapiro to serve as their chief science officer.

That’s where she helped bring back the Dire wolf, or something like it.

According to Colossal, the company’s scientists extracted ancient DNA from millennia-old Dire wolf bones. Using that prehistoric code as a guide, they edited a handful of genes in grey wolf cells for traits they linked to Dire wolves – like a bigger frame and longer hair. They then moved their genes into embryos that, when carried by surrogate dog moms, produced wolves with fluffy white coats and some dire wolf traits.

While some, including Phelan, argued that this could be a significant stride in the science of de-extinction, any potential advances were lost in a flurry of media coverage and debate over scientific rigor and thorny ethical quandaries.

Many proponents of de-extinction as a potential tool worried that Dire wolves no longer have a role in the environment – there are no more wooly mammoths or giant sloths for the beast to hunt.

“It starts to devalue if people think (de-extinction) is all about Jurassic Park – It’s just not. It’s something much more serious, it really is about ecosystem restoration,” said Phelan.

Some feared that claiming to bring back a species would weaken efforts to protect them: fears that were fueled by statements from the Secretary of the Interior and by a push by the Trump administration to weaken the Endangered Species Act .

“We have a higher calling for these tools,” said McCauley, who called the Dire wolf experiment and its fallout the “worst case scenario” for de-extinction. “It was not just a distraction. It actually was a very significant threat to endangered species conservation.”

Others argued that the high-tech exploits would distract money and attention from already-underfunded conservation efforts. “(T)he priority ought to be saving … endangered species and not attempting to recreate extinct ecological niches,” said Ben Sacks, director of the Mammalian Ecology and Conservation Unit at UC Davis, in an email. “I think the potential harms of charging forth into the great unknown with shiny tools and hubris to guide conservation efforts are likely to far outweigh any benefits that might come of them.”

Shapiro maintains that the experiment could offer key insight crucial to advancing the science of de-extinction, including whether the genetic changes affect the long-term health of an animal or its ability to reproduce. As of yet, there isn’t another ideal candidate for de-extinction, she argues. “If we say we’re going to go to the moon and the first thing we do is get into orbit, are people just mad because we didn’t immediately go to the moon?” asked Shapiro.

In an attempt to cut through the noise, Phelan collaborated with a group of scientists, conservationists and ethicists to create a statement maintaining that while biotechnology could have a key role in conservation, it is far from a cure-all and that without laws protecting species and efforts to protect habitats, the point of de-extinction is moot.

While the debate simmers on, the team at Colossal continues to monitor the wolves in their remote preserve in an undisclosed location, searching for hints as to how their altered genes might affect them.

Kapan, meanwhile, holds that the experiment may give clues to how de-extinction projects might proceed after releasing animals into the wild.

On one of his trips to monitor the butterflies, Kapan and a group of volunteers take a walk around the Presidio, looking for unmarked Silvery Blue butterflies – a sign that some of those released last year managed to reproduce. A volunteer calls Kapan with a sighting, and he rushes to the scene. Between them, they catch sight of two butterflies that day – a female and a male – living proof that the species is surviving on its own in the new habitat, beating their wings in the wake of extinction.