I’m packing to leave on the field course this Friday. We need some fresh supplies in Cherskiy. There are several trivial things on my list like ziplock bags and half-inch PVC and less trivial items like a cross-hair reticle for the microscope. I decided to knock off a few items by heading to the greatest hardware store in the world when something amazing happened. I got into the car, turned the key, and the first words that came out of the radio speaker were “Pleistocene Park.” Our local NPR station was in the last few minutes of a show about Pleistocene rewilding and featured author Sharon Levy talking about her book “Once And Future Giants: What Ice Age Extinctions Tell Us About The Fate Of Earth’s Largest Animals.” The brief discussion I caught centered on the work Zimov has done introducing megafauna to Pleistocene Park and monitoring the changing landscape underfoot. Here is a link to the show. I’ve never got over my skepticism of Jung, but this is enough to make one believe in synchronicity.

Zimov shows Tyler Pleistocene grass roots perserved in the permafrost

We’ve visited the park every year we’ve been in Cherskiy but this year we plan more intense research on the grazed versus ungrazed areas; monitoring changes to soil carbon as well as associated nutrients like nitrogen and phosphorus. Seeing the Pleistocene grassland and imagining the landscape is a sobering experience that I tried to describe two years ago in a NY Times piece about the Polaris Project. It’s tough. It’s a reminder that amazing things happen in Siberia and that I’m lucky to be a scientist on the forefront of such a timely issue. Eastward ho!

Grasses replacing forest in Pleistocene Park