153 A Siberian Rewilding
Channel: Curiously Polar
Date: 2022-05-05

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**POLAR NEWSREEL**:

**01 Arctic Lightnings:** A [dramatic rise in lightnings](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2022/jan/07/lightning-high-arctic-rise-scientists-worried?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other) last summer saw nearly [double as many strikes as the previous nine years combined in the High Arctic](https://www.vaisala.com/sites/default/files/documents/WEA-MET-2021-Annual-Lightning-Report-B212465EN-A.pdf) which [correlates with global temperature anomalies](https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/climate-change/global-warming-arctic-lightning-strikes-up-drastically-in-2021-81102) and can become an important [climate crisis indicator](https://www.noaa.gov/news-release/arctic-report-card-climate-change-transforming-arctic-into-dramatically-different-state). | **02 Scottish Arctic:** Defining itself as the [northernmost non-Arctic state](https://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/columnists/scotland-worlds-most-northerly-non-arctic-nation-must-intensify-its-relations-region-michael-russell-3044419) and sharing similar rural and demographic features mean that [Scottish and Arctic communities share many present-day priorities](https://polarconnection.org/rural-north-scottish-arctic/) analysts feel

 that [Scotlands geostrategic significance to the High North](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03071847.2022.2036229#.YjNY7NF8xy0.twitter) is still being overlooked despite its own [Arctic Policy Framework](https://www.abdn.ac.uk/law/blog/scotlands-new-arctic-policy-framework-fostering-partnerships-in-the-north/) .

**A SIBERIAN REWILDING**

A new study published by the University of Leeds suggests[permafrost is thawing all over the Arctic](https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/03/220314120647.htm) and might have [reached a tipping point](https://www.carbonbrief.org/imminent-tipping-point-threatening-europes-permafrost-peatlands) in Northern Europe and Western Siberia and indicates that even with the strongest efforts to reduce global carbon emissions, [by 2040 the climates of Northern Europe will no longer be cold and dry enough to sustain peat permafrost](https://www.carbonbrief.org/imminent-tipping-point-threatening-europes-permafrost-peatlands). Storing more than double the carbon of the planet’s atmosphere, a thawing permafrost acts as a positive feedback loop, further increasing warming.

The unprecedented speed of the climate crisis asks for creative solutions and in Northeast Siberia, [Russian scientists are working on one of the most unlikely solutions](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/can-bringing-back-mammoths-stop-climate-change-180969072/) to restore high productive ecosystems and help protect the permafrost. For the past 33 years, the father-and-son team [Sergey and Nikita Zimov](https://theconversation.com/mammoth-task-the-russian-family-on-a-resurrection-quest-to-tackle-the-climate-crisis-138142) have been [slowly transforming a 20 square kilomtres area](https://www.rgs.org/geography/climate-change/39-ways-to-save-the-planet/siberian-rewilding/) in northeastern Siberia, to [investigate how man can affect the climate through ecosystem reconstruction](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-021-00692-9?utm_medium=affiliate&utm_source=commission_junction&utm_campaign=3_nsn6445_deeplink_PID100259591&utm_content=deeplink).

The project is [repopulating the area with large herbivores like horses, moose and reindeer, musk ox, bison, yaks, cows and sheep](https://pleistocenepark.ru/territory/). [Sergey Zimov’s](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Zimov) hypothesis is that [the change from tundra to grassland will result in a raised ratio of energy emission to energy absorption](https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1113442) of the area, leading to less thawing of permafrost…