Great Britain is home to the Frozen Ark project, an effort to preserve the DNA and living cells of endangered species. The San Diego Zoo has been operating a so-called frozen zoo — freezing animal semen, feces and other samples in liquid nitrogen — since 1976.

But Russia's Moscow State University aims to outdo them both, several times over. The research university recently received a grant from Russia's government — the country's largest scientific grant ever — to build a genetic library, filled with frozen DNA from every living creature on the planet.

"I call the project 'Noah's Ark,'" MSU rector Viktor Sadivnichy recently told reporters. "It will involve the creation of a depository — a databank for the storing of every living thing on Earth, including not only living, but disappearing and extinct organisms."

Construction of the databank facility will commence quickly, with plans for the depository to be completed by by 2018.

"It will enable us to cryogenically freeze and store various cellular materials, which can then reproduce. It will also contain information systems. Not everything needs to be kept in a petri dish," explained Sadivnichy.

The new database will first be sourced with materials already being held by the university's many research departments. All of its departments will also be involved in sourcing new material.

While the new database will be grand in its aims, it's not entirely unique; the country has also begun work to create a storage facility in Siberia that will use thick, ice-cold permafrost to preserve a variety of seed and plant samples for posterity.

FWS to review status of monarch butterfly
Washington (UPI) Dec 30, 2014 –

The most iconic butterfly in the United States, the monarch butterfly, may warrant federal protections. On Monday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced it would begin a year-long review of the butterfly's protection status.

If biologists determine the beleaguered butterfly to be significantly threatened by extinction, officials could decide to list the monarch as "endangered" under the Endangered Species Act — a federal law that affords plants and animals special protections.

The status review was initiated in response to a petition put forward by the Center for Biological Diversity, the Center for Food Safety, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation and Dr. Lincoln Browe.

Monarchs and their large orange and black patterned wings are found all across the United States. A large portion of the insect's population makes an exhausting yearly migration — sometimes as long as 3,000 miles — from North America to Mexico.

"This journey has become more perilous for many monarchs because of threats along their migratory paths and on their breeding and wintering grounds," FWS officials wrote in a released statement.

Though their numbers appeared to bounce back in 2014, monarch populations have rapidly declined over the last decade. While pesticide toxicity has taken some of the blame for their plummeting numbers, habitat loss is the insect's most significant threat. The caterpillars that turn into monarchs feed exclusively on milkweed, a flowering plant that's been decimated by the expansion of industrial agriculture across America's heartland.

The Fish and Wildlife Service will field public comments on the impending status review for the next 60 days.