Humans have introduced a multitude of species into the once pristine, untouched Galapagos Islands. Some of these species have thrived over the past centuries and assimilated into the equilibrium of the environment, but a select few have thrown off the natural predator- prey balance of the island. Eradicating the invasive species on the island is very expensive, time consuming, and dangerous to the animals and even people which are it targeted. Researchers are beginning to look to a more long term goal to fix the problem. If scientists genetically engineer the sex cells of the invasive species they could make it so that the species targeted are no longer viable, or only producing males thereby eradicating their population off the islands in the future without ever employing and toxic chemicals to the island injuring its inhabitants. This form of genetic engineering is called gene drive. The basic strategy of using gene drive in the conservation setting is to work with the DNA using either the new gene-editing tool CRISPR or other tools of genetic manipulation, to change the odds of sex inheritance; one example would be to produce offspring that would be exclusively male. The elimination of females, would establish a reproductive dead end for the invasive species species.
