Pleistocene Park is a 20-square-kilometer north eastern Siberian nature reserve incorporated as a charity un
der American law in Pennsylvania. It is based on a Soviet era Arctic research station, which serves as its headquarters. This complex legal status, involving Russia and the United States, shows the remarkable global co-operation it has inspired in two great challenges facing our planet the threats to biodiversity and anthropogenically induced climate change.
h2.NO ANTHROPOCENE
One idea that is not popular among the supporters of Pleistocene Park is the concept of a recently triggered An thropocene epoch. Supporters of Pleistocene Park led by the founder of the Northeastern Arctic Research Station, Sergey Zimov, do not regard the disastrous human meddling in the biosphere of our planet as being of recent origins sparked by the industrial revolution as do the advocates of the Anthro-pocene.
They see the creation of the Holocene epoch itself as being human-triggered, ten thousand years ago. Advocates of Pleistocene Park see the end of the Pleistocene as a consequence of the invention of projectile spears which made it possible for humans to exterminate large mammals through spears and the emergence of the Clovis Point weapon. Like deniers of an thropomorphic climate change today, Zimov and his increasingly influential network of prestigious scientific allies face sceptics who challenge their shared views about the end of the Pleistocene. They believe the change from the Pleistocene to Holocene was triggered primarily by human overhunting of large megafauna. This brought about, for in stance, the end of the biome known as the Mammoth Steppe.
The Mammoth Steppe’s richness in diverse wildlife has caused it to be com pared to the African savannahs. The now extinct Woolly Mammoth in the wilds of Siberia played an ecological role comparable to the Forest Elephant and Savannah Elephant species surviving in Africa’s savannah in reducing tree densi-ties.
Elephants are unique in their ability to knock down trees. Similarly, the Wooly Rhinoceros, wiped out in Siberia during the Pleistocene extinctions, was a cold-weather variant of the White and Black Rhinoceros which survive in Africa. While advocates of Pleistocene Park like to jokingly make references to their dream in comparison with the fictional cinematic Jurassic Park about the age of Dinosaurs, their idea was first put forward long before such science fiction fantasies. The concept of Pleistocene Park was used in 1970 by the authors Prince Phillip and James Fischer to describe African National Parks, which provide refuge for surviving megafauna such as Elephants and Rhinoceros.
In originally proposing his version of Pleistocene Park, Zimov was concerned with increasing habitat for surviving mammals that escaped the Pleistocene extinctions. One successful restoration was the Musk Ox, which after being wiped out in Asia, were imported from Canada during the Soviet era to Wrangel Island. This isolated Siberian Island was the last refuge for the Wooly Mammoth after it was quickly wiped out when humans arrived there 6,000 years after it was extirpated on the mainland. It has become a refuge for the Wisent (European bison), formerly confined to Poland and Belorussia. When grassland conditions improve, it is planned to restore populations of the endangered Saiga Antelope and Bactrian Camel.
When Pleistocene Park was established in 1996 it had already a substantial population of caribou and wolves. It also held abundant populations of the European Brown Bear and Wolverine. Moose populations, however, had un degron a significant decline because of an increase in poaching in this part of north-eastern Siberia over the past 20 years. Moose were introduced from other parts of Russia and a fence was built which was designed to permit the species to move in but not out. The Al tai Wapiti (Elk), a common species in Siberia, was restored through introductions.
The Pleistocene Park has not engaged in any research to bring back the Wooly Mammoth from extinction, but Zimov has indicated his goal is to provide proper habitat for it, should it succeed. The park has used a bulldozer, jokingly called a “baby Mammoth,” to knock down trees and improve habitat for grazing herbivores.
Zimov’s change in emphasis for Pleistocene Park from enhancing bio diversity to climate change prevention emerged from the peculiar circum stances of his Chersky region of Siberia in the Sakha Republic. The region has some of the worst impacts in the world of human-induced climate change.
Nowhere else on the planet have temperatures risen so quickly as Siberia, tripling since 1975 when the Northeast Siberian Research Station was founded. Temperatures in the region have risen by three degrees. Buildings here that were built on the assumption that permafrost would endure are cracking and collapsing. Fur clothes are being abandoned as unnecessary during the coldest winter months. Trees are twisted by the melting permafrost, which also releases methane, a potent greenhouse gas, and appear as drunken forests. Roads leading out of Chersky have sunk from the melting permafrost. Methane is leaking out of Thermokarst lakes. The biggest permafrost crater in the world is the Batagaika Crater, in the Chersky range area. It is in the form of a one-ki lometer-long gash, some 328 feet deep.
The crater is growing in size from the constant thaw of permafrost and regular landslides into its rim. The crater has re vealed fossils from the Ice Age era, most notably a species of horse that vanished during the Pleistocene extinctions. Within Pleistocene Park Zimov, by increasing the density of various grazing animals, has been able to compress snow cover, thereby decreasing soil temperature and preventing the loss of permafrost. The landscape is now dominated by grasslands, replacing moss. Through increasing the density of herbivores to 114 per square kilometer (including do mestic horses), the annual soil tempera
Restored grasslands in Pleistocene Park, it was reduced by 1.9 degrees Celsius. This cooling protects permafrost from melting. In most of the regions where permafrost exists, the only large herbivore is the Caribou, which tends to have a lower impact on snow compaction, with densities usually not exceeding 10 animals per square kilometer. These results were published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature, in an article in March 2020 by Sergey Zimov, his son Nikita, Christian Beer and Johan Olofsson.
NO ALTERNATIVE
There appears to be no alternative remedy to arresting permafrost decay with its doomsday scenario of out of-control methane emissions than increasing the grazing of herbivores, which is the project of Pleistocene Park. Its advocates are in a race against time. Despite this reality, the park has had great difficulty in securing the animals best suited to its ambitious goals of stopping permafrost melting through compacting and grazing. Negotiations were made with the Canadian government to secure Wood Bison well suited to grazing in the boreal forest conditions of Pleistocene Park.
This animal is the closest survivor to the exterminated giant Steppe Bison. Unfortunately, authorities in the Sakha Republic insisted that the Wood Bison be transferred to them for their own ecological resto ration projects. With considerable challenges, two importations were made of Plains Bison, from the Dittlevsdal Bison Farm in Denmark, so the herd in Pleistocene Park now numbers 35 animals. Although sceptics ridicule Pleisto cene Park without understanding the lack of an alternative remedy to the threat of a methane-releasing time bomb, the most disturbing aspect is about its small size in relation to the huge task of converting the desert-like tundra in Siberia, Alaska and the Canadian Arctic to a lush species-rich savannah.
Even when the Sakhan Repub lic transfers a 600-kilometer buffer to Pleistocene Park, as promised, it would only be 620 kilometers in extent. This is tiny in comparison to templates for Pleistocene type restoration projects in the largest national parks in Canada and the United States, where free-roaming bison herds are expanding amid political debate and controversy.
These, the last refuge of the American bison, are Yellowstone, some 3,468 square kilometers in extent, and Wood Buffalo, 44, 741 square kilometers. At the start of the 20th century, those who struggled to save from extermination the bison then holed up in Wood Bison and Yellowstone national parks, were racing against time, much as now are the architects of Pleistocene Park. Then the threat was poaching of the last legally protected bison; now it is the melting of permafrost from rising temperatures. John Bacher is an environmentalist in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada.
