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Taking a leaf out of Michael Crichton’s book Jurassic Park, the Japanese
government has decided to deep-freeze the country’s last two crested ibises,
with a view to one day resurrecting the species by cloning new birds.

The two survivors await certain extinction in a reserve on Sado island,
off the west coast of Japan’s main island, Honshu. All attempts to encourage
the birds to breed failed, and in vitro fertilisation or use of a surrogate
mother are out of the question because they are now too old to produce viable
sex cells. As a last resort, the Environment Agency asked the Japan Wildlife
Research Centre to investigate ways of preserving the bird’s genetic code
for the day when the technology catches up with science fiction.

‘Now, we have no method to re-create the ibis,’ says Kenji Kitaura,
a vet who worked on the study. ‘But in future we may be able to do so, if
we can preserve the DNA information. If we can’t recreate the ibis itself,
we will try to create a hybrid using the Asian ibis, which is closely related.’

Researchers believe that cloning techniques will eventually be advanced
enough to replicate a bird from any one of its cells, taking DNA from the
ibis and implanting it into the hollowed-out egg of another animal – the
technique that formed the basis of the plot of Jurassic Park.

For now, following the advice of the scientists, the agency plans to
take tissues from each part of the ibises’ bodies when they die, and store
them in liquid nitrogen at a temperature of -196 degreesC.

The Japanese crested ibis may be only the first of a number of near-extinct
species to undergo the Jurassic Park treatment. ‘Our first target is the
ibis, but next we want to preserve the Japanese otter, which is also nearing
extinction,’ says Kitaura. He also thinks it might be possible to find enough
useful DNA from specimens of the already extinct Japanese wolf to one day
re-create the species. ‘It might be difficult, but still possible,’ he says.

Critics say the plan is misdirected. ‘It’s too late, says Celia Song
of the World Wide Fund for Nature in Japan. ‘I’d like Japanese people to
learn a lesson from this kind of important species becoming extinct. We
should try everything not to repeat such a thing.’

Kitaura says that preserving genetic information from the last two crested
ibises is better than nothing. ‘We have no way to save them, so we must
do something.’