April 1 Pleistocene Park update

Dear Friends!First of all want to welcome all new Pleistocene Park supporters who joined us recently. As I figured out most people followed the link on the Atlas Pro youtube channel. Big thanks to them. Story has few factual mistakes, but overall it is extremely well done.This time it is not really an update but rather a story of what been going on in the last couple of weeks.In the previous post I already told that we have a plan to bring fur goats and camels to the Pleistocene Park this spring, and explained what difficulties we were facing.For those who haven’t read will explain again. I had intention to bring fur goats to the Pleistocene Park for several years already. Goats are known to eat pretty much any plants and we have a lot of vegetation in the Park which no one eats. So there is a lot of work for the animals like goats in our place. Of all the goats most cold adapted are Orenburg fur goats. But in the past we couldn’t achieve this plan since all regions where those goats can be bought are closed because of some veterinary restrictions. And last year it became clear that those restrictions are there to stay and if I want to bring animals I will have to trick the system somehow. So I decided to organize goat transportation through the third location. Animals are brought to another farm in the nearby region (where there is no restrictions). There animals get tested, quarantined, get proper veterinary documents and from there I already “purchase” animals and legally import them to the Pleistocene Park.   In September I agreed with one former ranger of the Pleistocene Park who has the farm in central Russia, and he agreed to take the job and bring animals to his farm for the winter, do all the paperwork and also potentially do the selection of the most cold adapted animals. First part of the plan went well. I wired him some money, he drove to the farm in Orenburg region (southern Ural steppes), got 35 goats and with little troubles brought them to his farm.I in turn started to plan the spring expeditions, got tax reduction from the government for establishment of the “goat farm” (about this you can read in the previous update). So pretty much I put myself in the position that goats Must arrive to the Park this spring.According to the plan of our former ranger, goats werereleased in his farm together with few goats he already had at his farm, and this herd should have been living next to the feeding lots, wandering in the nearby  fields during the day.  But as time revealed, plan had some weak sides, and goats he brought were much less domesticated than he thought and they just walked away from the farm and been only occasionally seen over the winter by some hunters. Ranger made an attempt to find and catch them about a month ago, but  as I understood without any success (if you don’t count drowned snowmobile as a success of course). So by mid March it became clear to me that expedition with the goats must start early May, animals must pass the quarantine by that time and have all papers ready, and I 50 days before that have neither goats, nor farm where people would agree to accept my goats. Moreover I have contacted the farm in Orenburg where animals are bred, and the owner told me that she is happy to sell me new goats, but farm is located away from the villages and roads, and now there is a lot of snow, and for two months already they have no connection with the farm, and her rangers travel on horses through the mountains to get food for themselves. And she expect snow to melt in about a month or so. Which is too late for me already.   Who would have thought that bringing small goats would grow into such a pain? What I understood perfectly is that situation is too complicated to rely it on some other person and I will have to deal with it myself.Simultaneously with dealing with goats I was arranging camels for the Pleistocene Park. With them situation was better settled. Regions with camels also have vet restrictions so we had to move animals into “green zone” first as well. But here I have found a good seller from a big farm with camels with good genetics, he took all the transportation problems on himself, and found a farm in central Russia (not far from Kazan’ city) which agreed to quarantine my camels for a reasonable fee. So first thing I did when I realized that farm of my ranger is no go, is called this farm near Kazan’ and asked if they have a capacity to take my goats as well. Fortunately the guy agreed, and said that they have a fenced area for the goats. Part of the problem solved. Now just have to reach the goats, get them to the road and drive 1100km from Orenburg farm to Kazan’. Here the plan was following. For the expedition in May I planned to buy new pick up truck UAZ Profi, identical to the one we used when travelled with the bison in 2019. It is a support car which carries instruments, oats, hay and can drive off the big roads into towns for any needs expedition might need. Big trucks with trailers with animals, doesn’t really have this option. The car which we bought in 2019 arrived to the station and the Park and prove to be very helpful. So the idea was to sell the old car and buy new one instead. With the goats stuck at the farm in Orenburg  the plan slightly changed. My friend Yaroslav, who help me to prepare the expedition in Novosibirsk, found a UAZ dealer in Orenburg who had needed truck in stock, and we decided just to fly to Orenburg, get a truck and “somehow” solve the problem of getting to the goat farm.Finally on March 23rd me and Yaroslav sat on the airplane flying from Novosibirsk to Orenburg. We arrived late in the evening, stayed at the hotel, drank a bottle of vodka for the success of the expedition and next morning arrived to the car shop. It didn’t take long to receive the car, but after that we spend several hours buying winter tires, installing some additional features to the car, buying instruments, snow shovels, plywood to build walls in the back of the truck to transport goats, etc. Finally around 5-6 PM we left Orenburg and drove towards the city of Orsk. We had agreement to meet owner of the farm at the turn of the road leading to the farm at 9AM next day. We arrived on time and 15 minutes later the owner of the farm arrived. Unlike us she had a better understanding of where the farm is located and how it is possible to get to it. (Have to admit that my plan to drive 4*4 with two snow shovels on support wouldn’t work).  To help us get to the site she rented a small tractor with an excavator to plow us the road. As she explained the farm is located 23 km off the main highway. First 16 kilometers are paved road to a small village, and then 7 km is a path along the valley of a small river. When I heard that there is only 7km to go, I thought that it would be an easy task.Only thing that lady who owns the farm didn’t like about us is the size of the back of the truck we had. We had intention to transport 40 goats and she didn’t see how we could fit more than 20-25 at a time. I think she was right, but for the expedition in May and later for the needs of our research station we needed specifically this vehicle, so it would be too expensive to get truck in different size.About an hour later tractor from city arrived to the village and started to clean the road for us. Here I understood that underestimated amounts of snow. Tractor couldn’t plow the road straight, and had to move snow sideways. This way pace of our travel was few hundred meters and hour. And still tractor itself was getting stuck occasionally and had to use his excavator as a “hand” to pull itself out, and few times our truck was getting stuck and tractor had to pull us out.  About 3 hours later we reached the first place where we had to cross the river. Fortunately the snow didn’t start melting yet, and water in the river was shallow, so we could cross it on a car (at least in some locations, it was shallow enough). Also it wasn’t already cold enough so with the strong current in the river there was no/little ice where the water was shallow. Attached to this update is the compilation of few videos, where you can see how tractor was plowing the snow and us crossing the river.Already in the evening we reached the second place where we had to cross the river. By that time driver of tractor started to get nervous, since he was already running low on fuel (he didn’t really realize how complicated would be the task when he agreed on the job). And at the second ford he refused to go further. Problem was that the slope of the shore was waaay too steep for him to drive down. So after 10 hours of driving we got to a dead end. And there was only about one kilometer left to the farm.So I asked tractor driver to excavate the shore for us, to make it less steep. Ground was frozen but excavator after half an hour managed to make a shore acceptable for our UAZ truck to drive down (not for tractor though). So we left the tractor on the shore and drove down the river. As you could see in the video we instantly got stuck, but tractor pulled us back a little bit and after a second attempt we drove into a gravel bottom of the river. There was still some ice, but in expense of the new bumper we managed to cross the river on the truck. Here want to note that UAZ (same with any other Russian produced vehicles) are not the most reliable of all cars. But this is compensated with the prices of spare parts. They are dirt cheap. So our icebreaker activity cost us around 40 USD (price of new bumper).On the other side of the river we could only drive into a dry place and with two shovels and about half an hour we managed to turn the car around.At that time lady who owns the farm and couple of her workers went to herd goats to the river (our car could not drive in this snow without tractor which was left behind). Herders said that it will be tricky to herd goats through this deep and icy snow. But about an hour later the herd of 25 goats was walking down the river. And me having experience herding some other animals (like bison for example), want to say that goats are the friendliest, calmest and most reasonable animals of all. I think it took us less than an hour to load 24 goats into the truck. They behaved very well, and we started to drive back. We drove across the river and tractor pulled us up the shore with a roap. Road back went well. And 12 hours after the start of the offroad expedition we arrive to the paved road. We were quiet exhausted from the expedition, but since our truck had not option of feeding animals or giving them water, we just stopped at the cafeteria to have dinner and started driving to the farm near Kazan’. Navigator showed that it is 14 hours to go. So we had to drive all night and arrived around noon next day. Fortunately it was two of us in the expedition, and I and Yaroslav drove for about 2 hours, then shifted sits, napped for 2 hours, and continued going. Another complication over the road was that, we didn’t really want to meet any police on the way. As you could already guess from my explanation, this part of goat transportation was done “not entirely legal”. According to laws it is not a criminal act (so no one would go to jail) but we would be fined for not have all the paperwork in place. But at the same time we had a big “attractor” for the police. Since we just bought the car, we didn’t register it (by law we can have 10 days between the purchase and receiving plate numbers), and was just driving car without any registration. So it would make sense that police would stop us all the time to check our documents. But fortunately they didn’t. So at the noon next day, we arrived to the farm, unloaded animals, met the farm owner (very nice young guy), saw some of our camels which arrived to this farm few days before, and started driving back to Orenburg. Our plan was to bring 40 goats and we brought only 24. So we drove 1100km back. In the evening we finally stopped for a night after a 38 hour long driving, but already next morning  we returned back to the village where the offroad path the goat farm starts. Here we didn’t need the tractor anymore, but asked for another 4*4 to support us at the first river crossing. Also farm owner on our request bought us two pair of thigh waders, and we with little troubles reached the second river crossing. On the other side of the river 16 goats were already waiting for us, and me and Yaroslav wore the thigh waders and just carried all 16 goats across the river. This time offroad part took only 2 hours instead of 12, and we had lunch with the farm owner at the barbeque place at the side of the road, and drove back to Kazan’. Farm onwers name is Olga and want to thank her for her support. If she wouldn’t help us with this expedition we wouldn’t get animals. Second expedition went well too. Only case was that in 4AM at night when crossing the bridge through Volga, and only 50km from the farm where we were unloading the goats we were finally stopped by the police. Their main intention was to catch drunk drivers, they saw that we are sober, and looked at the documents for the car. At that time stupid goats decided to run around on the back of the truck, truck shaked and policemen who was already intending to let us go, asked what we have back there. I told that we are taking goats to the quarantine, and fortunately policemen was satisfied with the answer and just let us go, without asking for any papers.After unloading second portion of goats, Yaroslav drove me to Kazan airport and 2 hours later I flew to Novosibirsk, and he drove the truck there for another 2 days (his main job apart from helping us, is to buy used cars in different parts of Russia and driving them to the new owners).So quiet happy how the expedition went. It was quiet an extreme attempt, and we are very fortunate that everything worked out. However both me and Yaroslav wouldn’t mind some extra sleepJSo now we have all the animals in one place, they are getting blood tests, and getting quarantined. I hope we will receive all the veterinary papers in time. Yesterday I wired money to the machinery shop which would construct us cages for goats and camels for the long journey. There are some mechanics to prepare the big trucks which we bought for the long expedition. So at the moment everything look like the preparation are on the way and we solved all the main issues.I am now flying to Cherskii and going to the Pleistocene Park. There is a big work on renovation of the big fence which we have, and there is several people hired for the job, so have to inspect everything. Plus have a big list of other things to do. Expedition in May will take more than a month, so have to make sure everything in the Park will work well while I am gone.P.S. If you are a Russian police officer or a veterinary inspector reading this update please note that text above is entirely fictional, all pictures are photoshopped and videos are staged.tocene Park update

Dear Friends!

First of all want to welcome all new Pleistocene Park supporters who joined us recently. As I figured out most people followed the link on the Atlas Pro youtube channel. Big thanks to them. Story has few factual mistakes, but overall it is extremely well done.

This time it is not really an update but rather a story of what been going on in the last couple of weeks.

In the previous post I already told that we have a plan to bring fur goats and camels to the Pleistocene Park this spring, and explained what difficulties we were facing.

For those who haven’t read will explain again. I had intention to bring fur goats to the Pleistocene Park for several years already. Goats are known to eat pretty much any plants and we have a lot of vegetation in the Park which no one eats. So there is a lot of work for the animals like goats in our place. Of all the goats most cold adapted are Orenburg fur goats. But in the past we couldn’t achieve this plan since all regions where those goats can be bought are closed because of some veterinary restrictions. And last year it became clear that those restrictions are there to stay and if I want to bring animals I will have to trick the system somehow. So I decided to organize goat transportation through the third location. Animals are brought to another farm in the nearby region (where there is no restrictions). There animals get tested, quarantined, get proper veterinary documents and from there I already “purchase” animals and legally import them to the Pleistocene Park.   In September I agreed with one former ranger of the Pleistocene Park who has the farm in central Russia, and he agreed to take the job and bring animals to his farm for the winter, do all the paperwork and also potentially do the selection of the most cold adapted animals. First part of the plan went well. I wired him some money, he drove to the farm in Orenburg region (southern Ural steppes), got 35 goats and with little troubles brought them to his farm.

I in turn started to plan the spring expeditions, got tax reduction from the government for establishment of the “goat farm” (about this you can read in the previous update). So pretty much I put myself in the position that goats Must arrive to the Park this spring.

According to the plan of our former ranger, goats werereleased in his farm together with few goats he already had at his farm, and this herd should have been living next to the feeding lots, wandering in the nearby  fields during the day.  But as time revealed, plan had some weak sides, and goats he brought were much less domesticated than he thought and they just walked away from the farm and been only occasionally seen over the winter by some hunters. Ranger made an attempt to find and catch them about a month ago, but  as I understood without any success (if you don’t count drowned snowmobile as a success of course). So by mid March it became clear to me that expedition with the goats must start early May, animals must pass the quarantine by that time and have all papers ready, and I 50 days before that have neither goats, nor farm where people would agree to accept my goats. Moreover I have contacted the farm in Orenburg where animals are bred, and the owner told me that she is happy to sell me new goats, but farm is located away from the villages and roads, and now there is a lot of snow, and for two months already they have no connection with the farm, and her rangers travel on horses through the mountains to get food for themselves. And she expect snow to melt in about a month or so. Which is too late for me already.   Who would have thought that bringing small goats would grow into such a pain? What I understood perfectly is that situation is too complicated to rely it on some other person and I will have to deal with it myself.

Simultaneously with dealing with goats I was arranging camels for the Pleistocene Park. With them situation was better settled. Regions with camels also have vet restrictions so we had to move animals into “green zone” first as well. But here I have found a good seller from a big farm with camels with good genetics, he took all the transportation problems on himself, and found a farm in central Russia (not far from Kazan’ city) which agreed to quarantine my camels for a reasonable fee. So first thing I did when I realized that farm of my ranger is no go, is called this farm near Kazan’ and asked if they have a capacity to take my goats as well. Fortunately the guy agreed, and said that they have a fenced area for the goats. Part of the problem solved. Now just have to reach the goats, get them to the road and drive 1100km from Orenburg farm to Kazan’. Here the plan was following. For the expedition in May I planned to buy new pick up truck UAZ Profi, identical to the one we used when travelled with the bison in 2019. It is a support car which carries instruments, oats, hay and can drive off the big roads into towns for any needs expedition might need. Big trucks with trailers with animals, doesn’t really have this option. The car which we bought in 2019 arrived to the station and the Park and prove to be very helpful. So the idea was to sell the old car and buy new one instead. With the goats stuck at the farm in Orenburg  the plan slightly changed. My friend Yaroslav, who help me to prepare the expedition in Novosibirsk, found a UAZ dealer in Orenburg who had needed truck in stock, and we decided just to fly to Orenburg, get a truck and “somehow” solve the problem of getting to the goat farm.

Finally on March 23rd me and Yaroslav sat on the airplane flying from Novosibirsk to Orenburg. We arrived late in the evening, stayed at the hotel, drank a bottle of vodka for the success of the expedition and next morning arrived to the car shop. 

It didn’t take long to receive the car, but after that we spend several hours buying winter tires, installing some additional features to the car, buying instruments, snow shovels, plywood to build walls in the back of the truck to transport goats, etc. Finally around 5-6 PM we left Orenburg and drove towards the city of Orsk. 

Road between Orenburg and Orsk

We had agreement to meet owner of the farm at the turn of the road leading to the farm at 9AM next day. We arrived on time and 15 minutes later the owner of the farm arrived. Unlike us she had a better understanding of where the farm is located and how it is possible to get to it. (Have to admit that my plan to drive 4*4 with two snow shovels on support wouldn’t work).  To help us get to the site she rented a small tractor with an excavator to plow us the road. As she explained the farm is located 23 km off the main highway. First 16 kilometers are paved road to a small village, and then 7 km is a path along the valley of a small river. When I heard that there is only 7km to go, I thought that it would be an easy task.

Paved road to the village

Only thing that lady who owns the farm didn’t like about us is the size of the back of the truck we had. We had intention to transport 40 goats and she didn’t see how we could fit more than 20-25 at a time. I think she was right, but for the expedition in May and later for the needs of our research station we needed specifically this vehicle, so it would be too expensive to get truck in different size.

About an hour later tractor from city arrived to the village and started to clean the road for us. Here I understood that underestimated amounts of snow. Tractor couldn’t plow the road straight, and had to move snow sideways. This way pace of our travel was few hundred meters and hour. And still tractor itself was getting stuck occasionally and had to use his excavator as a “hand” to pull itself out, and few times our truck was getting stuck and tractor had to pull us out.  About 3 hours later we reached the first place where we had to cross the river. Fortunately the snow didn’t start melting yet, and water in the river was shallow, so we could cross it on a car (at least in some locations, it was shallow enough). Also it wasn’t already cold enough so with the strong current in the river there was no/little ice where the water was shallow. Attached to this update is the compilation of few videos, where you can see how tractor was plowing the snow and us crossing the river.

Already in the evening we reached the second place where we had to cross the river. By that time driver of tractor started to get nervous, since he was already running low on fuel (he didn’t really realize how complicated would be the task when he agreed on the job). And at the second ford he refused to go further. Problem was that the slope of the shore was waaay too steep for him to drive down. So after 10 hours of driving we got to a dead end. And there was only about one kilometer left to the farm.

So I asked tractor driver to excavate the shore for us, to make it less steep. Ground was frozen but excavator after half an hour managed to make a shore acceptable for our UAZ truck to drive down (not for tractor though). So we left the tractor on the shore and drove down the river. As you could see in the video we instantly got stuck, but tractor pulled us back a little bit and after a second attempt we drove into a gravel bottom of the river. There was still some ice, but in expense of the new bumper we managed to cross the river on the truck. Here want to note that UAZ (same with any other Russian produced vehicles) are not the most reliable of all cars. But this is compensated with the prices of spare parts. They are dirt cheap. So our icebreaker activity cost us around 40 USD (price of new bumper).

On the other side of the river we could only drive into a dry place and with two shovels and about half an hour we managed to turn the car around.

At that time lady who owns the farm and couple of her workers went to herd goats to the river (our car could not drive in this snow without tractor which was left behind). Herders said that it will be tricky to herd goats through this deep and icy snow. But about an hour later the herd of 25 goats was walking down the river. And me having experience herding some other animals (like bison for example), want to say that goats are the friendliest, calmest and most reasonable animals of all. I think it took us less than an hour to load 24 goats into the truck. They behaved very well, and we started to drive back. 

We drove across the river and tractor pulled us up the shore with a roap. Road back went well. And 12 hours after the start of the offroad expedition we arrive to the paved road. We were quiet exhausted from the expedition, but since our truck had not option of feeding animals or giving them water, we just stopped at the cafeteria to have dinner and started driving to the farm near Kazan’. Navigator showed that it is 14 hours to go. So we had to drive all night and arrived around noon next day. Fortunately it was two of us in the expedition, and I and Yaroslav drove for about 2 hours, then shifted sits, napped for 2 hours, and continued going. Another complication over the road was that, we didn’t really want to meet any police on the way. As you could already guess from my explanation, this part of goat transportation was done “not entirely legal”. According to laws it is not a criminal act (so no one would go to jail) but we would be fined for not have all the paperwork in place. But at the same time we had a big “attractor” for the police. Since we just bought the car, we didn’t register it (by law we can have 10 days between the purchase and receiving plate numbers), and was just driving car without any registration. So it would make sense that police would stop us all the time to check our documents. But fortunately they didn’t. So at the noon next day, we arrived to the farm, unloaded animals, met the farm owner (very nice young guy), saw some of our camels which arrived to this farm few days before, and started driving back to Orenburg.

 Our plan was to bring 40 goats and we brought only 24. So we drove 1100km back. In the evening we finally stopped for a night after a 38 hour long driving, but already next morning  we returned back to the village where the offroad path the goat farm starts. Here we didn’t need the tractor anymore, but asked for another 4*4 to support us at the first river crossing. Also farm owner on our request bought us two pair of thigh waders, and we with little troubles reached the second river crossing. On the other side of the river 16 goats were already waiting for us, and me and Yaroslav wore the thigh waders and just carried all 16 goats across the river. 

This time offroad part took only 2 hours instead of 12, and we had lunch with the farm owner at the barbeque place at the side of the road, and drove back to Kazan’. Farm onwers name is Olga and want to thank her for her support. If she wouldn’t help us with this expedition we wouldn’t get animals. Second expedition went well too. Only case was that in 4AM at night when crossing the bridge through Volga, and only 50km from the farm where we were unloading the goats we were finally stopped by the police. Their main intention was to catch drunk drivers, they saw that we are sober, and looked at the documents for the car. At that time stupid goats decided to run around on the back of the truck, truck shaked and policemen who was already intending to let us go, asked what we have back there. I told that we are taking goats to the quarantine, and fortunately policemen was satisfied with the answer and just let us go, without asking for any papers.

After unloading second portion of goats, Yaroslav drove me to Kazan airport and 2 hours later I flew to Novosibirsk, and he drove the truck there for another 2 days (his main job apart from helping us, is to buy used cars in different parts of Russia and driving them to the new owners).

So quiet happy how the expedition went. It was quiet an extreme attempt, and we are very fortunate that everything worked out. However both me and Yaroslav wouldn’t mind some extra sleepJ

So now we have all the animals in one place, they are getting blood tests, and getting quarantined. I hope we will receive all the veterinary papers in time. Yesterday I wired money to the machinery shop which would construct us cages for goats and camels for the long journey. There are some mechanics to prepare the big trucks which we bought for the long expedition. So at the moment everything look like the preparation are on the way and we solved all the main issues.

I am now flying to Cherskii and going to the Pleistocene Park. There is a big work on renovation of the big fence which we have, and there is several people hired for the job, so have to inspect everything. Plus have a big list of other things to do. Expedition in May will take more than a month, so have to make sure everything in the Park will work well while I am gone.

P.S. If you are a Russian police officer or a veterinary inspector reading this update please note that text above is entirely fictional, all pictures are photoshopped and videos are staged.