Worlds Ready for Moa: The Pasts and Futures of De-Extinction

This essay considers the de-extinction prospects for Aote-aroa New Zealand’s endemic group of avian megaherbivores. It examines a wide range of narratives concerned with the moa’s extinction, possible endurance, and potential resurrection, focusing on the way these multispecies histories define prehuman baselines, claim and contest founding myths, and promise restorative futures. It considers the fraught implications of extinction and de-extinction in a settler nation still negotiating a history of colonial dispossession and the terms of bi-cultural sovereignty.