23/09/2022
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/03/31/world/frozen-zoo-save-species-scn-c2e-spc-intl/index.html
When Kurt Benirschke started collecting skin samples from rare and endangered animals in 1972, he didn’t have a firm plan on what to do with them. As a researcher at the University of California San Diego, he believed that one day the tools would be developed to use them to save those animals. A few years later, he moved his collection to San Diego Zoo, and called it the Frozen Zoo.
“Famously, there was a poster that hung above the Frozen Zoo with a quote that said, ‘You must collect things for reasons you don’t yet understand,’” says Oliver Ryder, a geneticist at San Diego Zoo and an early collaborator with Benirschke. “We felt that we were stewards of this growing collection that was going to have value to the future in ways we weren’t able to appreciate then.”
Benirschke passed away in 2018, but his efforts are very much alive. Today, the Frozen Zoo is the world’s largest animal cryobank, with samples from over 10,500 individual animals from 1,220 species.
San Diego's Frozen Zoo pioneered freezing animal cells with the aim of aiding conservation. Now, groups like The Frozen Ark and Nature's Safe are among a growing number of cryobanks working to preserve biodiversity.
