Paul Scofield: Canterbury Museum's Senior Curator of Natural History on the project planning to resurrect the Moa

There's a belief a plan to resurrect the extinct Moa will have ample roll-on effects. 

US company Colossal Bioscience has partnered with Ngāi Tahu in a $50 million project to revive the flightless bird through gene editing. 

Canterbury Museum's Senior Curator of Natural History Paul Scofield says it's a great eco-tourism opportunity. 

He told Heather du Plessis-Allan people could come and see Moa roaming the hills in a reserve. 

Scofield says scientists would also be able to see how these birds affected the ecology of New Zealand. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now do you remember when Truva Maler made that joke
years ago right about about bringing them more back to
life and we gave them a grief, really hard time
for it. They're actually trying to do it and it's
got the financial support of Sir Peter Jackson. Paul Schofield.
Doctor Paul Scofield is the senior Curator of Natural History
Canterbury Museum and is with us morning. Paul. Now, these guys,
this American company, reckon that they can do it in

(00:20):
ten years. Are they dreaming?

Speaker 2 (00:22):
No, not at all. I mean they're well on the way,
to be honest. They've got an incredible technology, huge group
of staff, and they've got the backing of Notathas, who
is a NATO research center here in Canterbury.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
How would it work? I mean would what what would
we end up with? Would it be an actual MORE
or would be a modern take on the More.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
It'll be a modern take on the MA, but it'll
be it'll be a moa because Noli say it's a
mala where we will take the DNA of these extinct
birds that we get from pay is like swamps and
caves and by sequencing hundreds of genomes we will determine

(01:08):
exactly what makes ama a morea all the genes which
actually fundamentally define that giant bird with its bizarre plumage
and its complete lack of a wing, and we will
engineer that into the cells of an emu or potentially

(01:31):
even a tinemu, which is as closest relative of South
American birth, and we'll bring back something that we will
believe is as close to ama as possible.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
So, so, will it look like a moo? Will it
look like an em.

Speaker 2 (01:45):
No, it'll look exactly like a molla. Oh wow. And
you know it'll be ancesary a process. It will take
that the first our first take on it will be
in ten years time. All so, but as we discover
more and more about their their genome, we'll we'll get
closer and closer to the real thing.

Speaker 1 (02:07):
And then what's the end goal, At some stage decades
from now, you have enough of actual more to be
able to leave them to themselves and they breed and
carry on.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah. Well, in the first instance, it's an amazing eco
tourism opportunity for Nahoe to actually have a large preserve
somewhere in the northern part of the South Island, probably
where for paid tourism we can actually have people come
in and actually see mower blooming the hills. And it's

(02:41):
also an amazing opportunity for ecology and for science to
actually have the opportunity to see how these giant birds
actually affected the e college of New Zealand when we
get when we go out into the forest today, it's
really only a fact similar of what the forest will
like eight hundred years ago than first Maldi arrived, because

(03:05):
in fact, these birds are giant ecosystem engineers. They're actually
fundamentally changing the way that the forest is actually structured,
and that we have some inkling into how they actually
did that and what I think that they actually had.
Actually having the real thing out there in the forest
will be actually incredibly informative to our understanding of museum

(03:27):
and conservation and ecology.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yeah, fascinating stuff. Hey, Paul, thank you so much for
talking us through at Doctor Paul Scofield, Senior Curator of
Natural History, Canterbury Museum. For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast,
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