Pleistocene Park (Russian: Плейстоценовый парк, romanized: Pleystotsenovyy park) is a nature reserve on the Kolyma River south of Chersky in the Sakha Republic, Russia, in northeastern Siberia, where an attempt is being made to re-create the northern subarctic steppe grassland ecosystem that flourished in the area during the last glacial period.

[1][a] The project is being led by Russian scientists Sergey Zimov and Nikita Zimov,[3][4][5][6][7] testing the hypothesis that repopulating with large herbivores (and predators) can restore rich grasslands ecosystems, as expected if overhunting, and not climate change, was primarily responsible for the extinction of wildlife and the disappearance of the grasslands at the end of the Pleistocene epoch.

[10] The primary aim of Pleistocene Park is to recreate the mammoth steppe (ancient taiga/tundra grasslands that were widespread in the region during the last ice age).

Reintroducing large herbivores to Siberia would then initiate a positive feedback loop promoting the reestablishment of grassland ecosystems.

This argument is the basis for rewilding Pleistocene Park's landscape with megafauna that were previously abundant in the area, as evidenced by the fossil record.

Here the key concept is that some of the effects of the large herbivores, such as eradicating trees and shrubs or trampling snow, will result in a stronger cooling of the ground in the winter, leading to less thawing of permafrost during summer and thereby less emission of greenhouse gases.

[13] Due to recent climate change, the permafrost is beginning to thaw, releasing stored carbon and forming thermokarst lakes.

Even if the ecological situation of the arctic were as it was 400,000 years ago (i.e., grasslands instead of tundra), a global temperature rise of 1.5 °C (2.7 °F) relative to the pre-industrial level would be enough to start the thawing of permafrost in Siberia.

[10][23][24] Finally, once a high density of herbivores over a vast area has been reached, predators larger than the wolves will have to be introduced to keep the megafauna in check.

[28] The effects of large animals (mammoths and wisents) on nature were artificially created by using an engineering tank and an 8 wheel drive Argo all-terrain vehicle to crush pathways through the willow shrub.

[55][better source needed] For the near future the focus in animal introductions will generally be placed on browsers, not grazers, i.e., bison, muskoxen, horses, and domestic yaks.

[23] The Zimovs' concept of Pleistocene Park and repopulating the mammoth steppe is listed as one of the "100 most substantive solutions to global warming" by Project Drawdown.

[59] The list, encompassing only technologically viable, existing solutions, was compiled by a team of over 200 scholars, scientists, policymakers, business leaders and activists;[60][61] for each solution the carbon impact through the year 2050, the total and net cost to society, and the total lifetime savings were measured and modeled.

[62][63] In January 2020, a study co-authored by Nikita Zimov and three University of Oxford researchers assessed the viability of the park's goals when implemented on a larger scale.

[64] The park is a hub for international scientists and students, who come from around the world to conduct their own ecological research and experiments.

[67] Pleistocene Park is a 160 km2 scientific nature reserve (zakaznik) consisting of willow brush, grasslands, swamps, forests and a multitude of lakes.

[5] The reserve is surrounded by a 600 km2 buffer zone that will be added to the park by the regional government once the animals have successfully established themselves.

was founded, a non-profit organization (registered in Pennsylvania, US, with 501(c)(3) status)[69] dedicated to acquiring private donations for funding Pleistocene Park.

[70] Hitherto Pleistocene Park had been financed solely through the funds of the founders, a practice that grew increasingly insufficient.

26 April 2023. was founded in Germany by Michael Kurzeja and Bernd Zehentbauer and serves as a bridge between science, politics, companies, and society.

Nonetheless, Zimov has manifested his willingness to volunteer the park as a location for reintroduction in the event of such animals ever being produced, particularly in regard to the woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius), an extinct ecosystem engineer with no living proxies.

Currently the staff uses a vehicle to bulldoze trees too large to be broken by the park's residents but that would be vulnerable to mammoths, opening forest terrain that the animals can turn into grassland through grazing.

[27][124] Unlike Pleistocene Park, Wild Field's primary purpose is not scientific research but public outreach, i.e., it will provide a model of what an unregulated steppe ecosystem looked like before the advent of humans.

[125] Already present in the park are nine species of large herbivores and one omnivore species: Bashkir horses (a strain of Equus ferus caballus) from the southern part of the Ural Mountains,[126][127] Altai maral/Altai wapiti (Cervus canadensis sibiricus),[127] Edilbaevskaya sheep (a strain of Ovis orientalis aries),[citation needed] roe deer (Capreolus spec.

),[f][124][129] Kalmykian cattle (a strain of Bos primigenius taurus),[7][130] domestic yaks (Bos mutus grunniens),[7][130][131] wild boar (Sus scrofa),[131] one female elk[BE]/moose[AE] (Alces alces),[131] four reindeer (Rangifer tarandus)[132] and 73 domestic Pridonskaya goats (a strain of Capra aegagrus hircus).