Different approach, that attempt was to reduce population sizes not cause extinction. Though it is evidence that Gene Drive is less likely to work than many expect.
Nature thwarts gene drives by modifying their targets, so it's important that whatever is being targeted can't easily change. Surviving instead of being killed off is certainly an evolutionary advantage, after all :-)
While that may be true for general use of the gene drive, doesn't this particular use significantly increase the fitness of the individual organisms (despite being harmful to the species as a whole), resulting in essentially no evolutionary pressure against it?