Sergey Zimov wants to return Siberia to the Pleistocene era. If he succeeds, he might prevent a climate catastrophe.
The thawing Siberian expanse. PacificKlaus. CC BY-NC 2.0.
Think of Sergey Zimov a bit like Noah. Zimov, like Noah, seeks to save humanity. How? By gathering animals two by two. The only difference is that Noah is a biblical patriarch building an ark before the Great Flood, and Zimov is a Russian scientist preserving Siberian permafrost to stave off global warming. If his efforts don’t succeed, another great flood may loom ahead.
Zimov preaches of permafrost, a layer of soil that remains frozen throughout the year, and its hastening thaw. The word is a translation of the Russian phrase “vechnaya merzlota,” meaning “eternal frost.” Increasingly, the phrase is becoming a misnomer. The Siberian permafrost that Zimov studies melts every year. Worse yet, much of it doesn’t refreeze in the winter. His plan is to save it by returning wild animals to Siberia and the Arctic, winding back the clock to the Pleistocene era when animals roamed the now-frigid land. He calls the plan Pleistocene Park.
Preserving permafrost is an essential, though rarely discussed, prerequisite for slowing the rise of global temperatures. It contains fossilized mammals packed with carbon; at 1600 billion tons, northern permafrost alone contains twice as much carbon as is currently in the atmosphere. If it thaws, scientists estimate that more greenhouse gas would be emitted by it alone than by all of the world’s SUVs, airplanes, container ships, factories and coal-burning plants combined. Global temperatures would rise, causing more thaw, causing more leakage, initiating a vicious feedback loop that ends in skyrocketing temperatures.
The scientific community only recently learned of the threat that thawing permafrost poses to the climate, and they have Zimov to thank. When he first began studying permafrost from his outpost in Chersky, Russia, he struggled to publish his findings. It took many years for Zimov to gain advocates in the scientific establishment. F. Stuart Chapin, one of Zimov’s early co-authors, says, “Every time we talked to Sergey about something that just seemed off the wall, sooner or later he’d convince us.” As he convinced more and more scientists, Zimov’s seemingly crazy ideas soon became common sense.
Sergey Zimov, far left, at the 11th Annual Climate Leadership Summit. Monroe County Bocc. CC0.
It took an iron will to persevere through his career’s inauspicious beginning. He moved to Chersky with his wife in 1980 to escape the prying eyes of the Communist Party. Chersky was the perfect place to be alone; it is farther east than Tokyo and farther north than Reykjavik, Iceland. Its mere mention once struck fear into prisoners’ hearts as home to one of the most brutal gulags in the Soviet Union. When Zimov arrived, it looked like the end of the world. Eighty-five percent of its population had fled elsewhere. Children set abandoned buildings on fire for fun.
Now, scientists flock from around the world to visit the Northeast Science Station (NESS), which Zimov runs. He has co-authored papers with esteemed scientists from across the globe. His son Nikita chose to follow in his father’s footsteps in maintaining NESS, carrying on his research and maintaining his father’s greatest achievement: Pleistocene Park.
In the Pleistocene era, which began 1.75 million years ago and ended 11,000 years ago, Siberia resembled the African savanna more than a snowblown tundra. The abundant grass reflected sunlight away from the ground, maintaining the temperatures that allow permafrost to remain frozen. In 1996, Zimov began rewilding the region by introducing yaks, horses, sheep, oxen and other grazing animals that will trample shrubs, moss and larch trees, which prevent the growth of grass. The 62 square miles that the animals roam is Pleistocene Park.
Many of Zimov’s ideas are still controversial; Pleistocene Park is easy to mock. The costs are large, the feasibility low, and the logistics nightmarish. Still, Zimov has succeeded in bringing back many animals to the region. Since the founding of Pleistocene Park, soil temperatures have cooled by almost 4 degrees Fahrenheit. A 10-year feasibility study, published by Oxford University, estimated that successful rewilding would require 3,000 animals and $114 million. Most jarringly, Zimov would need a magic bullet to tear down Siberia’s many trees. For this, he hopes to summon a species out of extinction: the woolly mammoth.
A fossilized baby woolly mammoth. James St. John. CC BY 2.0.
The idea is simultaneously insane and not as insane as it sounds. Extinct for 4,000 years (a short period in geological time), woolly mammoths are closely related to modern-day elephants. The main differences arise from adaptations specific to the Arctic’s frigid habitat. George Church of Harvard University currently collaborates with Zimov to one day deliver him a woolly mammoth. Using CRISPR gene-editing technology, Church plans to use the existing template of a modern elephant and tweak its genomes to allow the animal to survive in the Arctic. Then, natural selection would weed out unnecessary traits and perfect the necessary ones. Church estimates he could deliver Zimov his woolly mammoth in 10 years’ time.
For now, Zimov enjoys his solitary life in Chersky. He smokes. He savors good vodka. Colleagues keep him company year-round these days. The climate crisis seems far-off in the Siberian winter, but it is never far from Zimov’s mind. He gave himself a mammoth task in preserving permafrost and approaches it with the zeal of a saint. His ambition could easily be called biblical. He doesn’t shy away from such lofty language either. When asked what he’s doing in Siberia, Zimov responds, “I’m building an ark.”
Michael McCarthy
Michael is an undergraduate student at Haverford College, dodging the pandemic by taking a gap year. He writes in a variety of genres, and his time in high school debate renders political writing an inevitable fascination. Writing at Catalyst and the Bi-Co News, a student-run newspaper, provides an outlet for this passion. In the future, he intends to keep writing in mediums both informative and creative.