“A complete and honest portrayal of the messy intersection between Arctic science and climate change solutions...”

Benjamin Abbott, Assistant Professor of Ecosystem Ecology, Brigham Young University

Pleistocene Park

Directed by Luke Griswold-Tergis

101 minutes | SDH captions | Scene Selection

Fifteen years ago, Russian geophysicist Sergey Zimov published an article in the journal Science showing that frozen arctic soils contain twice as much carbon as the earth’s atmosphere. These soils are now starting to melt.


Seeking no one’s help and asking nobody’s permission, Sergey and his son Nikita are gathering any large woolly beast they can get their hands on and transporting them, by whatever low budget means they can contrive, to the most remote corner of Siberia. They call their project Pleistocene Park. The goal: restore the Ice Age “mammoth steppe” ecosystem, thereby preventing Arctic permafrost melt and slowing its release of sequestered carbon, and avoid a catastrophic climate feedback loop leading to runaway global warming.

On a global scale, progress addressing the root cause of climate change – anthropogenic carbon emissions – is as elusive as ever. Impacts of climate change – hurricanes, wildfires, heat waves and floods – are being felt sooner than anticipated. Can these two Russian scientists stave off a global environmental catastrophe and reshape humanity’s relationship with the natural world?


The clock is ticking.


Pleistocene Park is available on DVD with public performance rights for school and library purchase or rental. Academic streaming can be licensed from Docuseek. Campus and community groups interested in hosting a community screening can book now through Bullfrog Communities.

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This remarkable documentary is very much about how this tremendously ambitious idea collides with the messy, muddy, buggy reality of dredging up various bands of muskoxen, reindeer, wild horse, yak, moose and bison and delivering these animals to a small patch of land in one of the remotest corners of one of the most remote regions on Earth...The themes are serious, the warnings dire, the science sound - but the story of the Zimovs' dogged Quixotic pursuit to save the world via mass ecological intervention is also inspiring and oddly hopeful.

Eliezer Gurarie, Professor of Environmental Biology, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry


“Beautifully filmed and conceived...Based on a long-term and personal engagement with the Zimov family, Luke Griswold-Tergis tells a compelling story, part science documentary, part tragicomedy of errors, of one family living in the remote Arctic on a grand quest to save humanity from impending climate catastrophe. Pleistocene Park will be an excellent addition to the classroom in environmental science, anthropology, and Russian and Eurasian Studies."

—Anya Bernstein, Professor of Anthropology, Harvard University

To order Pleistocene Park on DVD with public performance rights for educational use,

visit the Bullfrog Films online catalog.

Order by phone at (610) 779-8226

or email us at info@bullfrogfilms.com

Academic Streaming

Bullfrog Films is the oldest and largest publisher of documentary films about the environment in the United States. We define "environment" broadly, and our catalog includes programs on ecology, energy, agriculture, indigenous peoples, women's studies, environmental justice, international relations, sustainable development, anthropology, economics, ethics, and conflict resolution.

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