Pleistocene Park

Located in Eastern Siberia, on the edge of the Arctic Circle, Pleistocene Park is an engineered, multi-generational rewilding study to relocate herds of animals to cultivate shrub forest back to grassland. Directed by Sergey Zimov and his son Nikita, it may conjure up Jurassic Park-like narratives with their attempts to insulation permafrost to slow the release of carbon from below the surface through importing animals to graze the permafrost soil.

A remote territory supported by all-terrain vehicles, staff and outpost facilities, the Park has become the world’s largest rewilding experiment importing oxen, horse, moose, camel and bison to maintain the grassland which in turn insulates the permafrost and creates a natural support system similar to the Mammoth Steppe (14,500 years ago), slowing  the release of carbon dioxide from the soil. Creating viral interest in their research, the Park sparked sci-fi storylines and worldwide interest with connected made to George Church and the attempts to clone a mammoth. Proposed as a future habitant for these cloned “mammoths” the park continues to be a bizarre and uncanny landscape of human invention amongst climate collapse.