Caveat Resurrector
Not so fast. A very short caution.
An idea whose time has apparently arrived facilitated by the biotech we are now coming to grips with, is the idea of the de-extinction of vanished species. Candidates for this are creatures who once roamed the earth such as wooly mammoths, dodos, passenger pigeons, Tasmanian wolves, and so forth. The idea is to bring them back by the means we now have available. As more and more species go extinct every year this idea seems just fine, even necessary. But we should be careful about bringing back species that have been extinct a long while.
Before we bring back extinct species we should perform a variety of macro-biological, microbial, hydrological, soil, and even atmospheric studies to see what species do to alter current environmental regimes that are more or less at equilibrium. Extreme caution is in order. A prolific species like the passenger pigeons might out-compete current species in the same niches and drive them to extinction. Current conditions are far different now than those in the mid 1800s. A voracious predator like the Thylacene might hunt to extinction species that are not ready for its reintroduction. Predator-prey ratios are a very tricky business.
What is particularly troubling is that a lot of this research is being done in biotech startups that see viable business models in de-extinction. That's not bad in itself and it's a good thing these enterprises are coming into being. But they conceivably may be more aggressive and less cautious than their academic counterparts. In the coming administration's business-friendly encouragement of free enterprise, we might safely predict some mishaps, perhaps major, may occur if these organisms be they mammoth or pigeon or bacteria are released into the wild. Best for them and us is to proceed with the projects with all due caution. Of the three major scientific revolutions running concurrently- AI, biotechnology, and materials science, only AI and biotechnology have the potential to pose existential risks to us.
Although no project I know of currently in planning seems too harmful or risky, there is likely to be a proliferation of de-extinction targets and some of these if not handled very carefully indeed might be catastrophic.
Caveat Resurrector.
These de-extinction projects are mostly grand-standing with very little chance of success. Even if Passenger Pigeons could be resurrected any individual bird could only be successful in the wild if the other ten million birds of the ancestral flock could also be generated because they relied on flock dynamics to actually "be" a successful species. Can't be done - all you end up with is a colony of very unhappy birds.
As for CRISPR technology etc it is potentially amazingly useful with immense power if handled properly. https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2024/06/stanford-explainer-crispr-gene-editing-and-beyond
We humans are well known for our history of rushing into new tech, only to windup creating monsters. So, resurrecting extinct megafauna fits. This ole retired psychiatrist knows form long experience that losing agency (our ability to control our environment) is a key cause of depression and we are allowing ourselves to sink ever further into this algorithim/AI world as we watch our children scrolling away on their I-phones and requiring ever more psychiatric treatment. Hmmmm? Thank for your work and have a blessed day!