Pleistocene Park

A project is underway in Russia to return a portion of Siberia to the landscape and ecosystem that existed 10,000 years ago during the late Pleistocene. The initiative is led by Russian biologist Sergei Zimov, and is aptly dubbed “Pleistocene Park”

Already 20 square kilometers have been fenced off, and Yakutian horses, reindeer, and moose have been released into the park. Zimov hopes to import Canadian bison, musk oxen and eventually re-introduce the Siberian tiger once the large herbivore populations have been built up. NationalGeographic.com has a piece on Pleistocene Park from May 2005, and the New Scientist (subscription required) just did a feature as well. The National Geographic article suggests that if Japanese and Russian researchers were ever successful in finding viable woolly mammoth DNA and actually reviving the species (yes, they are really trying), they would be introduced into Pleistocene Park.

Via BldgBlog