An ambitious conservation project to fill a “frozen ark” with cells and DNA from species close to extinction is being held up by Britain’s strict laws on animal experiments, The Times has learnt.

Scientists from London Zoo have been unable to take tiny tissue samples from living animals, many of them extinct in the wild, because the pinprick procedures involved are subject to strict regulations designed for medical vivisection.

The Frozen Ark, which was launched in 2004, intends to preserve biological material from all the world’s endangered species, so that it is not lost to science if they die out.

As well as storing DNA, it is trying to obtain living cells, sperm and eggs, which could be used to advance scientific research, to assist captive breeding programmes and even, in the longer term, to regenerate extinct or rare animals through cloning.

This, however, means that cell samples must be taken from living or very recently dead animals. Efforts to do this have been hampered by Home Office regulations, even though collection requires a simple procedure no more invasive than an injection. The bureaucracy has made it impractical for scientists to collect samples from most of the 82 endangered mammalian species kept in captivity in British zoos. They have had to wait until individual animals are reported by keepers to be dying, and then dispatch a vet to take tissue immediately after death.

As a result, the project has stored only about 80 mammalian samples, from 19 species, during the four years for which it has been running.

Professor Bill Holt, of London Zoo’s Institute of Zoology, a co-ordinator of the Frozen Ark, said that it would have been able to collect four times as many had the regulatory problem been solved.

“We could have made much more progress if we could take cells from living animals,” he said. “It’s regarded as being equivalent to doing vivisection, and it would be regarded as an animal experiment. The Home Office has tightened up the regulations so much that you can’t get round it.”

Professor Holt said that while Home Office inspectors had been sympathetic to the project’s needs, they had insisted that tissue could be taken only with the same licences that are given to medical researchers conducting animal experiments.

This has been impossible because of the red tape involved, and because the Frozen Ark would have had to appoint a single named vet to take all samples from a network of about 30 zoos.

Professor Holt said that would have been impractical, and that while other zoos want to take part in the project, they would prefer sampling to be done by their own vets, who are familiar with their animals.

“We had a meeting with the Home Office and started to fill in the forms, but we realised it was inappropriate because the kind of questions they ask don’t apply to this scenario,” he said.

“Then we started to discuss it with the Home Office inspector, and she was very sympathetic, but her views of how we’d get around it were completely at odds with our maintaining good relations with other zoos.”

The Frozen Ark has stored biological samples from 43 species, 19 of which are mammals. All are either extinct in the wild, or are classified as critically endangered, endangered or threatened on the international Red List of vulnerable species.

Mammals sampled so far include the chimpanzee, the Asian lion, the kudu, the okapi, the Sumatran tiger, the Asian elephant and the Western lowland gorilla. Birds, reptiles and invertebrates include the Socorro dove, the Frigate Island palm beetle, the English field cricket, the Komodo dragon, and 13 species of Partula snails.

A spokeswoman for the Home Office confirmed that a Home Office licence would be necessary to take samples from living animals. “There are no exceptions allowed under the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986,” she said.

“Endangered species are given special protection and may only be used on projects aimed at their preservation, or for essential biomedical purposes where the species in question is the only one suitable for the purpose.”

Already on board

Mammals

Arabian gazelle, Amur leopard, Kudu, Asian lion, Okapi, Giraffe, Sumatran tiger, Amur tiger, Diana monkey, Hamlyn’s monkey, Anoa, Red-bellied lemur, Western lowland gorilla, Asian elephant, Przewalski horse, Hartman zebra, European bison,Chimpanzee

Non-mammals

Bali mynah bird, Frigate Island palm beetle, Enid or Frigate Island snail, Field cricket, Partula snail species (13), Komodo dragon, Golden mantilla frog, Salmon-crested, Moluccan cockatoo, Poor knights weta cricket, Chinese alligator, Yellow seahorse, Moluccan cockatoo, Socorro dove

Times Recommends

• Donor organ allowed child’s own heart to heal
• Michael Jackson: Not the final chapter
• Sacha Baron Cohen forced to tone down Brüno