A vessel designated to ensure the future of each animal species, designed to withstand the worst of Earth’s abilities. Sound familiar? It does if you’ve read the Biblical flood story and have heard of Noah.
The Frozen Ark, a charity-based “frozen zoo” launched jointly by the Zoological Society of London, the University of Nottingham, and the Natural History Museum in London, aims to emulate just that. Only, instead of being protected from biblical floods, animals are being protected from the irreversible actions of humankind. Deep in the labs of the Natural History Museum in London, the Ark collects and preserves the DNA and living cells of endangered animal species – both in zoos and those surviving in the wild – to retain genetic knowledge for the future.
As said in their mission statement, the Ark intends to “collect, preserve, and conserve the [DNA] of animal species facing extinction by providing infrastructure, expertise, partnership, and coordination for endangered animal biobanking,”; an imperative act in a world where species are being decimated by climate change. With globally record-breaking heat waves – and yet another expected in the upcoming summer – as well as floods, wildfires, and drenching rains, humans are experiencing never-before-seen effects of a changing climate.
The Frozen Ark project is engaged in a race against time. “The future of millions of species has not captured the attention of world leaders sufficiently to date to catalyze the necessary action.” states the official Frozen Ark website.
The 21st century “Ark” was founded by British Professor Bryan Clarke, his wife Dr. Ann Clarke and Dame Anne McLaren in 2004, after a study regarding land snails took a surprising turn. During a research trip to French Polynesia, the trio discovered that nearly 100 species of land snails had gone extinct over just 15 years, prompting them to bring some of the remaining snails back to England, freezing tissue samples, and setting up a captive breeding program at the London Zoo. With little done before to close the gap between biobanking and the threat of disappearing species, the Clarkes and McLaren took on the task, and created what is now known as the Frozen Ark.
The Ark holds itself to two main goals. The first, the long-term, focuses on storing genetic material in anticipation of future scientific breakthroughs. The second, or short-term, aims to use the Ark as an “active repository” storing data to help better manage decreasing animal populations before there is the risk of extinction, which could aid in the extinction crisis seen today.
To perform their species-saving work, researchers for the Ark collect tissue, viable cells, gametes and DNA of the threatened organisms, before returning the genetic material to frozen labs – both in the UK and across the globe – for further study and preservation. Since the birth of the Ark, scientists have collected material from thousands of species, with as many as hundreds of thousands of genetic samples presently being held in biobank freezers. Among the collection of DNA samples, are the black rhino, the polar bear, and the Colombian spider monkey, to name a few.
Since 1970, populations of animal species have plummeted by nearly website., and it is expected that roughly 1 in 10 animal species will be gone by 2050. While works of environmental retention like the Frozen Ark are not nearly enough to reverse an ongoing mass extinction, they are certainly steps in the right direction.
Consistent with working on environmental preservation efforts both in the UK and globally, the Ark hopes to “safeguard the genetic material of endangered animals for their conservation and [act] as a resource for the benefit of future generations.”
