Another Chance at Life
A black-footed ferret named Willa died in 1988 without descendants. Her cells were frozen and stored in San Diego. Decades later, Ryan Phelan helped bring together the people who would give that inheritance another chance.
Ryan is a dear friend. Over nearly twenty years, we have talked for hours about science and people, Sausalito, horses, and dogs. I know her aboard Mirene, the tugboat she shares with Stewart Brand, and among friends gathering olives at their grove. The scale of her work can be startling when I step back from the familiarity of our friendship.
In 2012, Ryan and Stewart founded Revive & Restore to explore how biotechnology could help endangered species survive. She came to conservation through human health, having founded companies that made medical information and genetic testing more accessible. She brought experience turning scientific possibilities into something people could use.
The ferrets presented a problem that breeding alone could not solve. Their recovery program depended on descendants of just seven founders. More births could increase the population, but could not restore genetic variation those founders never carried. With so little diversity, a species may have fewer ways to adapt to disease or environmental change.
Willa’s frozen cells held some of that missing variation.
Revive & Restore worked with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, and specialists at ViaGen to produce Elizabeth Ann in 2020, the first clone of an endangered American species. In 2024, another clone of Willa, Antonia, produced two surviving offspring. Genes preserved for decades had entered a new generation.
Such work depends on sustained collaboration. Someone has to bring the right people together, secure support, and stay with a project through uncertainty. Ryan has made that her work. Revive & Restore also investigates de-extinction, exploring how genetic techniques might restore characteristics of lost species. Those possibilities remain experimental. The ferrets offer a tangible result, alongside the continuing need for habitat protection and careful breeding.
I think about the people who saved Willa’s cells before anyone knew how to use them. Their foresight needed someone else’s persistence. Decades later, Ryan helped carry their decision forward.
After so many years of friendship, I find that deeply moving. Willa’s story could have ended in 1988. Instead, there are young ferrets carrying an inheritance that might have disappeared with her.
