Stevie Hankins
English 1110.01 AU19
Professor Weiser
The Far Away Dream of Pleistocene Park
In his article on Pleistocene Park, writer Ross Andersen challenges that radical Russian scientists, Sergey and Nikita Zimov’s, ideas might just be far off dreams. Today, climate change is what a lot of people are worrying about. However there are plans in motion; plans like Pleistocene Park. Pleistocene Park was the idea of Sergey Zimov and eventually headed by his son Nikita Zimov. The idea of the park is rather simple in thought, to tear down the Siberian forests and have large grassland take over. The forests have been accelerating the thawing of the permafrost – thick frozen layers of soil – and lush grasslands would slow such thawing (Andersen 5). To keep up and maintain the grasslands and the deforestation, comes the unorthodox idea: Bring back mammoths. Now mammoths are not the only animals being reintroduced, but they are the most crucial and they’ll take the longest to get. Mammoths are relatively new in the grave, so one hope is to clone pre-existing mammoth DNA. However if that’s not possible there is another option, genome editing. Geneticist George Church and his team of scientist at his Harvard lab have been trying since 2014 to just that, using CRISPR to edit the genome of Eastern Asian elephants (Andersen 6). Even then, it doesn’t have to be perfect. Natural selection can do the rest. Andersen addresses this by referencing another reintroduced species “Yakutian wild horses took less then 1000 years to regrow long coats after they returned to the arctic” (Andersen 6). The question arises however, how will that help the climate now.
The climate is quickly going down hill, and the amount of time we have to slow and/or reverse it is dwindling. While Anderson presents this project as inspIt takes 22 months for an elephant to complete gestation (Andersen 6). That’s a little under two years. How many mammoths would it take for the project to be underway. Now to bring back mammoths which can take longer to edit and bring into the world not to mention the 1000 years to evolve back into their woolly state. This idea while plausible, may take too long. The fear is that by the time the Zimov’s and Church get Pleistocene park up and running it may be too late. Time is of the essence and this plan takes too much of it. Church has been working on recreating the woolly mammoth since 2013 and the Zimov’s have been advocating for longer. Andersen also doesn’t fully believe in the Pleistocene Park, mentioning “I don’t know whether Nikita can make his father’s mad vision a material reality” (Andersen 22). With such a big project and many unforeseen challenges and set backs. Pleistocene park may end up mammoth less.
Works Cited
Andersen, Ross. “Pleistocene park.” The best American Science and Nature Writing 2018, edited by Sam Kean, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018, 1-22.