His mother, Nadezhda Pavlovna Dreyling (1906—1993), was a physician at the 5th city hospital in Moscow and was assistant to academician P. E. Lukomskiy .

He was a cuirassier officer, at the age of 17 he participated in the Battle of Borodino, was an orderly of the Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov, and then, went to Paris and participated in the battles, was awarded the Order of St. Anna of II degree and St. Vladimir of IV degree with a bow, kept a detailed diary of combat actions, stored in manuscript in the Historical Museum and published in the book “1812.

After leaving the second year of biology of the Moscow State University, he worked at a garment factory,[3] first as a student, and then went to the master of the seventh category for sewing men's outerwear.

[2] In 1952–1955, he actively participated in the work of the biology club of All-Russian Society for the Protection of Nature (VOOP) under the leadership of Pyotr Smolin.

Together with Boris Vilenkin, Pyotr Vtorov, Yuri Puzachenko, Olga Shokhina, Mikhail Chernyakhovsky, Leonid Lisovenko and Roman Zlotin, they became prominent representatives of the second generation of VOOP.

In 1975, he worked as part of the Soviet delegation at the XII General Assembly of the International Union for Conservation of Nature in the city of Kinshasa (Zaire).

[9] He participated in numerous scientific expeditions on the territory of the USSR (to Kamchatka Peninsula, the Far East, the Kuril Islands, the Pamir Mountains, the Tian Shan, the Karakum Desert).

In 1980, he participated in a 4-month expedition on the research ship of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union Callisto [ru] on the islands of Fiji, Tonga and Samoa, within the framework of the national project "Ecosystem" of the Academy of Sciences of the Soviet Union, on the topic "Protection and rational use of island ecosystems."

In 1993 and 1995, he participated in the expeditions of the Russian icebreaker Yamal (to the North Pole and on the Northern Sea Route) and on the ship "Discoverer" (along the coast of Alaska and Canada).

[10] In 2002, as part of the International Expedition, made a landing on the North Pole and spent a week in the ice camp Barneo.

The largest work is the 6-episode documentary Realms of the ”Russian Bear” (1988–1992), developed jointly with the natural history department of the BBC.

He was repeatedly a member of the jury of the Pop scientific film and television festivals about animals and the nature of Great Britain and Italy.

” program dated April 1, 2005 (on the 10th anniversary of the first broadcast at the Channel One Russia ) as part of the team of hosts of those years,[22] as well as in the KVN (in the second semi-final of the Higher League, in the fall of 2014).

[24] In 2008, he was the host of the program “In the world of people” at the Channel One Russia, but it did not last long, but caused a lot of negative emotions and criticism.