DOTHAN, ALABAMA - POLICE PLANTED DRUGS AND WEAPONS ON BLACK MEN FOR YEARS.

 

HUNDREDS OF CASES PROSECUTED WITH PLANTED EVIDENCE, MANY WRONGLY CONVICTED STILL IN PRISON

 

The Alabama Justice Project has obtained documents that reveal a Dothan Police Department's Internal Affairs investigation was covered up by the district attorney. A group of up to a dozen police officers on a specialized narcotics team were found to have planted drugs and weapons on young black men for years. They were supervised at the time by Lt. Steve Parrish, current Dothan Police Chief, and Sgt. Andy Hughes, current Director of Homeland Security for the State of Alabama. All of the officers reportedly were members of a Neoconfederate organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center labels "racial extremists." The group has advocated for blacks to return to Africa, published that the civil rights movement is really a Jewish conspiracy, and that blacks have lower IQ's . Both Parrish and Hughes held leadership positions in the group and are pictured above holding a confederate battle flag at one of the club's secret meetings.

 

The documents shared reveal that the internal affairs investigation was covered up to protect the aforementioned officers' law enforcement careers and keep them from being criminally prosecuted.

 

Several long term Dothan law enforcement officers, all part of an original group that initiated the investigation, believe the public has a right to know that the Dothan Police Department, and District Attorney Doug Valeska, targeted young black men by planting drugs and weapons on them over a decade. Most of the young men were prosecuted, many sentenced to prison, and some are still in prison.  Many of the officers involved were subsequently promoted and are in leadership positions in law enforcement. They hope the mood of the country is one that demands action and that the US Department of Justice will intervene.

 

The group of officers requested they be granted anonymity, and shared hundreds of files from the Internal Affairs Division. They reveal a pattern of criminal behavior from within the highest levels of the Dothan Police Department and the district attorney's office in the 20th Judicial District of Alabama. Multiple current and former officers have agreed to testify if United States Attorney General Loretta Lynch appoints a special prosecutor from outside the state of Alabama, or before a Congressional hearing. The officers believe that there are currently nearly a thousand wrongful convictions resulting in felonies from the 20th Judicial District that are tied to planted drugs and weapons and question whether a system that allows this can be allowed to continue to operate.

 

Members of the Henry County Report have spent weeks analyzing the documents. The originals, secured at an N.G.O. in Canada, are being shared directly with attorneys in the U.S. Dept. of Justice Civil Rights Division, and are being made available to the lawyers of those falsely convicted that seek to clear their names.

 

There are two federal lawsuits currently pending by former police officers Keith Gray and Raemonica Carney against the Dothan Police Department. They will be given access as well as they substantiate their claims of racial discrimination and city's violation of a federal court decree.

 

The documents serve as irrefutable evidence of criminal activity at the highest levels of the Dothan Police Department.

 

Beginning in early 1996, the Dothan Police Department received complaints from black victims that drugs and weapons were being planted. Specifically young black men who had clean records were targeted. Police Chief, John White, allegedly instructed senior officers to ignore the complaints and they willingly complied.  

 

In early 1998, a group of concerned white officers from within the Police Department complained in writing about what they witnessed. This is reflected in the document below where it refers to a series of allegations that took place over 11 months before the department acted. The initial written complaint from the department's own officers is dated June, 1998. The internal memo documents the last allegation as occurring in April of 1999. Almost a year of internal complaints by the department's own police officers passed before Chief White turned it over to the Internal Affairs Division.

 

On August 27, 1999 more than a dozen officers had allegations against them for planting drugs and weapons on black men they had falsely arrested. They were each notified of a formal investigation and required to prepare statements in writing to the Internal Affairs Division. They were then tested by polygraph examination, most reportedly failed. The notification of charges reference a combination of marijuana, cocaine, and guns being planted on citizens during arrests that were witnessed by multiple fellow police officers.

      

All of these cases involving planted drugs and weapons were subsequently prosecuted by District Attorney, Doug Valeska, despite the written allegations by police officers that the evidence was planted. Never was any such information shared in the discovery process with the defendant's attorneys.  We have been advised that each of these are considered felonies committed by the district attorney.

 

20151129_Valeska_Drugs

District Attorney Doug Valeska

  

One of the officers alleged to have planted drugs and guns, Michael Magrino, now an investigator working for the state's Indigent Defense Fund and Dothan attorney Derek Yarborough, was alleged to have stolen weapons and drugs in his car. A Dothan police officer familiar with the case told us that "Under no circumstances was this legal, he (Magrino) should have been immediately taken into custody prosecuted but he was not because Lt. Parrish defended him and blocked it."

 

20151130_Magrino_alt

Former Dothan police officer Michael Magrino

 

The documents reveal that Magrino contacted District Attorney Doug Valeska and Andy Hughes to intervene into the Internal Affairs investigation.

 

The head of the Internal Affairs investigation, Sgt. Keith Gray, repeatedly warned Magrino this was a violation of the departmental procedures. Magrino then threatened to go to the press if he was fired, according to a taped interview with Andy Hughes.

 

"He basically would have done anything to save his skin," one of the officers told us and referred to him as the "character from the movie "Deliverance" he squealed like a pig, eventually Hughes managed to shut him up and force him to resign to save the others."

dothan

In the internal affairs documents, three names worth noting appear repeatedly.

Capt. Carlton "Bubba" Ott, now commander of the department's Criminal Investigation Division, Steve Parrish, current Chief, and Andy Hughes, former Sheriff and current Director of Homeland Security for the state.

 

20151130_trio

Carleton "Bubba" Ott, Steve Parrish, and Andy Hughes

 

All were aware of the investigation and its outcome. All have been rewarded with careers in law enforcement by those for whom they covered, while those who spoke out were forced out of the department. Disturbingly, Ott and Parrish have both attended the FBI academy. Both were highly recommended by the district attorney and former Police Chief, John White.

 

However, not one of these officers, or members of the district attorney's office, had the moral courage to do the right thing and correct the wrongful prosecutions against the young men who had drugs and weapons planted on them.  Disturbingly, on his web site, John White lists that he is a adjunct professor at Troy University's Criminal Justice Program and advertises asking people to let him protect them in the courtroom.

 

All of these men are now in secure positions of leadership in law enforcement. Many of the men wrongly convicted however are still in prison and have felonies on their record, their lives destroyed.

 

The results of a polygraph tests given to officers like Michael Magrino were conclusive. The result was DECEPTION STRONGLY INDICATED – probability of deception was greater than 99%.  

 

The result of the internal affairs investigation found that many of the officers should be discharged such as the document below states in Officer Magrino's case.

 

The scale of the problem facing the city is indicated in Magrino's files where it mentions some 50 cases alone in his arrests that were questionably prosecuted. This number does not take into account the previous cases where he was the arresting officer, or the nearly dozen other officers in the squad with allegations against them by fellow officers.      

  

Internal Affairs Sergeant, Keith Gray, recommended that Magrino be immediately discharged and prosecuted, all of his previous cases reopened for investigation, and the judges and attorneys of those convicted be immediately notified. Gray believed there were hundreds of false arrests in the system by the group of officers, historically over a thousand.

  

However, at this point, our sources and the documents confirm the investigation was shut down, and the files ordered "buried" by Police Chief, John White, and District Attorney, Doug Valeska.

 

The original group of officers were dismayed that the investigation was covered up. Even more disturbing, the officers responsible were then promoted in the department. They allege the practice of planting drugs continued for years on black men by those who were part of the group.

 

On November 9th an unsigned letter by the officers was put on Dothan City Commissioner Don Clement's desk.  In the letter, officers detail how the investigation was covered up and they used officer Magrino as an example, referencing stolen guns and drugs in his patrol car. 

 

They refer to the issue that Magrino, like the other dozen officers had, executed hundreds of arrests that should be questioned in light of the results of the internal affairs investigation.

 

The letter indicates that federal law enforcement authorities were not notified as required by the department's and state's policies.

 

The letter directly implicates the top management of the Dothan Police Department as being complicit in a cover up of hundreds of felonies. Chief John White responded two weeks later in a letter to Dothan City Manager Jerry Gwaltney copied below.

  

 Note carefully that White stated in writing:

 

"AT NO TIME PREVIOUS, DURING OR SINCE, HAS ANY INDIVIDUAL MADE AN ALLEGATION THAT THIS OFFICER PLANTED OR MANUFACTURED EVIDENCE OR TESTIMONY IN ANY CASE."

 

White completely misrepresents the ongoing internal affairs investigation, that is evidenced in a letter to him by Sgt Keith Gray where he found that the officer in question, Michael Magrino, should be discharged.

 

Further, White seems to have forgotten the previous multiple written complaints by fellow officers implicating a dozen officers who were witnessed planting drugs and guns on black men dating back to 1998, or the fact that he ordered the cases turned over to internal affairs in the first place.

 

White's own words, as early as Nov 99, are clear evidence of an illegal cover up.

 

Police Chief John White was then deposed in an unrelated lawsuit where in June of 2001 he gave the following sworn deposition. Again, note that White misleads and gives multiple false statements under oath. At this point, he should have had his APOST certification stripped and been prosecuted.

       

In the deposition, it is clear that Police Chief, John White, now a lawyer and Troy University criminal justice professor, is being misleading. With the leaked internal affairs investigation now made public, it's obvious his sworn testimony is at odds with his written words to city officials, and it appears he lied under oath.

 

The larger issue is no less than hundreds of wrongly convicted black men and tens of millions of dollars in potential damages as well as potential prison terms for himself and the district attorney and those who assisted them.

 

The original group of police officers responsible for the written complaints were in disbelief and for years afterward attempted to get federal assistance to help those wrongly convicted and continued to warn of the practice of the narcotics team of planting drugs on young black men. The officers who were responsible for the narcotics team, Steve Parrish and Andy Hughes, continued to be advanced in rank and were richly rewarded for their complicity in hiding the truth.

For two decades District Attorney, Doug Valeska, having full knowledge of the situation, proceeded to earn a reputation across the Wiregrass as a tough prosecutor while knowingly prosecuting black men whom he knew the evidence was planted on them in their cases. The district attorney's office took in millions of dollars in court fees and their pre-trial diversion program.

 

The group of police officers who chose to notify federal authorities and the US Attorney in a series of constructed letters to protect their own safety documented is below as many had their lives threatened by fellow officers.

 

By coming forward almost a decade later after these letters, this group of officers who witnessed drugs and weapons being planted and had the moral courage to bravely do the right thing are hoping the United States Department of Justice will intervene. The want a specially appointed federal prosecutor, from outside the state of Alabama to hold District Attorney, Doug Valeska, former Chief, John White, current Chief, Steve Parrish, Homeland Security Director, Andy Hughes, and Capt Carleton Ott responsible. But most importantly, attempt to make those hundreds of young black men's lives whole again who have been victims of the Dothan Police Department. They believe the time for justice has come.  

 

Editors note: We contacted Dothan Police Chief Steve Parrish regarding this article and he declined comment, however we agreed to cooperate with him to redact any personal information from the documents that we share with the public that would compromise an ongoing investigation or put an individual at risk.

By  Jon B. Carroll  Posted on December 1, 2015

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SAVE THE WORLD

DUMP TRUMP

SUPER TYPHOON KILLED THOUSANDS BUT COAL AND OIL INTERESTS SUPPRESS THE TRUTH

 

Shortly after Super Typhoon Haiyan ravaged his home country in November of last year, a slim, soft-spoken and totally unknown climate negotiator from the Philippines found himself overcome by emotion when addressing a U.N. climate summit in Warsaw, Poland.

Yeb Saño, one of three climate commissioners from the Philippines, broke down in tears as he pleaded with representatives from other nations to commit to reducing planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions in order to prevent future superstorms like Haiyan. He spoke of family members still unaccounted for, combing through rubble to search for survivors.

SEE ALSO: At U.N. climate talks in Peru, it's optimism vs. reality

Saño started a hunger strike during the climate talks that gained participants around the world, effectively establishing himself as the emotional core of the otherwise staid negotiations, which often get lost in a blizzard of acronyms and minutiae.

Now, however, as the U.N. climate talks enter a critical phase in Lima, Peru through Dec. 12, that voice of conscience is missing in action.

Instead of navigating the conference center in Lima, Saño finds himself at home in Manila, with no explanation as to why he was left off the Philippines' official delegation at the last minute. In an eerie and frightening coincidence, another super typhoon is bearing down on his country, and may hit the same region devastated by Haiyan last year.

His absence has not gone unnoticed, though, as many climate activists held a hunger strike at the start of the climate talks to mark his absence.

Reached by Skype in Manila, Saño says he is at a loss for why he is there, and not in Lima, but that he supports his government's negotiating position, which is to secure an agreement that would limit global warming to less than 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels, as world leaders have previously agreed to. So far, international emissions reduction commitments are woefully insufficient to meeting that goal.

"I am also wondering why I am not in Lima right now," he said. He remains a commissioner for climate change, one of three that his country has. The other two are in Lima. Typically, he said, all three go to the annual talks.

 Philippines Prepare

Residents arrive at an evacuation center in Tacloban city, Leyte province, central Philippines Thursday, Dec. 4, 2014, as they prepare for approaching Typhoon Hagupit.

"I can only speculate because I don't know what goes on in the minds of some people who have made this decision. I am reluctant to comment on this right now because things are not yet settled down right now, I am still at a loss as to why I am not on the delegation right now," he said.

"I stand supportive of what needs to be fought for in Lima and now I want to focus on the incoming storm and in fact it's probably a blessing in disguise that I am in the Philippines because there is a lot of work that needs to be done. it's probably a blessing in disguise that I am in the Philippines because there is a lot of work that needs to be done."

"We of course face another monster storm and I will be spending the next couple of days in helping communities insure that they are prepared."

If Saño is being reprimanded for his use of emotion in the diplomatic process, it makes little sense in the context of the climate talks, which have stretched back more than two decades. His may have been the most sympathetic outpouring in the history of the negotiations, however.

In a speech at the start of the meeting in Warsaw, Saño told delegates from more than 190 countries:

 

To anyone who continues to deny the reality that is climate change, I dare you to get off your ivory tower and away from the comfort of you armchair. I dare you to go to the islands of the Pacific, the islands of the Caribbean and the islands of the Indian ocean and see the impacts of rising sea levels; to the mountainous regions of the Himalayas and the Andes to see communities confronting glacial floods, to the Arctic where communities grapple with the fast dwindling polar ice caps, to the large deltas of the Mekong, the Ganges, the Amazon, and the Nile where lives and livelihoods are drowned, to the hills of Central America that confronts similar monstrous hurricanes, to the vast savannas of Africa where climate change has likewise become a matter of life and death as food and water becomes scarce. Not to forget the massive hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico and the eastern seaboard of North America. And if that is not enough, you may want to pay a visit to the Philippines right now.

"We cannot sit and stay helpless staring at this international climate 

stalemate. It is now time to take action. We need an emergency climate pathway," Saño said. "I speak for my delegation. But more than that, I speak for the countless people who will no longer be able to speak for themselves after perishing from the storm."

By the end of the speech, Saño was in tears.

He was not the first, nor is he the last, climate negotiator to gain fame for an emotional speech. Another was Kevin Conrad, who, while serving as the climate negotiator for Papua New Guinea, castigated the U.S. for blocking an agreement in Bali, Indonesia, in 2007. The U.S. backed down shortly after the speech.

However, he is among the only ones with crossover appeal from the hallowed halls of diplomacy to the anything goes world of advocacy, with people around the world inspired by his actions citing him in their hunger strikes and other campaigns.

As Super Typhoon Hagupit moves toward the Philippines, potentially striking the city of Manila or the city of Tacloban, which is still struggling to get back on its feet after last year's storm, Saño says his government does not see such storms as separate from climate change. Saño says his government does not see such storms as separate from climate change.

"We don't look at these extreme events in isolation from the overall patterns," he said. "The Philippines has been visited by extreme storms even outside of typhoon season, and outside the traditional typhoon belt in recent years."

Saño says his country is one of the most vulnerable countries in the world to climate change, given that it is an archipelago that sits in the middle of the typhoon belt. It is prone to impacts from sea level rise as well as changes in storm intensity, frequency and tracks.

"We stand from a perspective of being a very vulnerable country and for us it is merely a matter of averting this crisis, meaning being able to fulfill the temperature targets" the world has already agreed to, he said. "The 2 degree Celsius target must be met if we are to prevent more dangerous climate change."

The goal of the Lima talks is to come up with a draft climate agreement that can be agreed to at another round of negotiations in Paris, France in December of 2015. The new treaty is slated to go into force in 2020. Saño says his fellow negotiators in Lima are working to ensure there is a "definitive direction toward an agreement in Paris that will be consistent with meeting that scientific imperative of not going beyond 2 degrees Celsius."

"That is our objective… that can only be done in our view if all countries are on board."

At the opening ceremony of the Lima talks, Rajendra Pachauri, the chairman of the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), told delegates that the world has used well over half (65%) its "carbon budget" that is compatible with the 2-degree goal, with just about 35% of the budget left. (The carbon budget is the estimated maximum amount of carbon dioxide that could be emitted over time while staying within the 2 degree Celsius limit.)

In order to keep the 2 degree target viable, Pachauri said, global emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, would need to peak within a decade global emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, would need to peak within a decade, and decline to zero or even negative numbers by the year 2100.

"We've reached a point where even the most ambitious targets by the richest nations will no longer be enough to meet the scientific target," Saño said, adding that this means there is a greater need for financial aid for the most vulnerable nations such as the Philippines.

For Saño, Typhoon Hagupit, which is known as Ruby in the Philippines, is just the latest example of how urgent this need is.

 

BY ANDREW FREEDMAN

Mashable.com

ATROCITIES IN CHINA - SEE FOR YOURSELF

Jeremy Taylor shared Zahir Muksin's photo.

‎Zahir Muksin‎ to Anti -China

It's time to free the Chinese from their greedy communist government!!! It's time to bring FREEDOM and DEMOCRACY to China!!

SIBERIAN SCIENTISTS PROVIDE PROOF OF RAPID CLIMATE CHANGE

The carcass of the world's most well-preserved baby mammoth, 
named Lyuba, is 42,000 years oldCredit: 2012 AFP/AFP
The telegraph.co.uk

FAST SIBERIAN MELT REVEALS BONES OF DINOSAURS AND OUR GRIM FUTURE

 

Russia's Pleistocene Park doesn't have any T-Rexes roaming its plains. But its owner is preparing for the arrival of another prehistoric beast - the woolly mammoth. Alex Hannaford reports

 

Nikita Zimov was just two when his family moved to a remote outpost in the far north-eastern corner of Russia. A 13-hour flight from Moscow, this tiny habitation in the north of Siberia was just 40 miles shy of the Arctic tundra and about as remote as you could get.

 

Overnight, Zimov's childhood playground became a landscape carpeted with moss and permafrost. Little did he know at the time, but his father, Sergey, had bigger ideas about who might one day share that playground with him.

 

It was 1980 and Sergey had gone to work full-time on the North-East Scientific Station, a research base for the study of ecology and climate change. It is now one of the largest research stations in the Arctic.

 

But it is a side project that Sergey began several years later that has really captured the public imagination: the wild-haired geophysicist is creating a vast nature reserve for the woolly mammoth, a species he fully expects to be brought back from extinction.

 

Jurassic World: everything you need to know

Pleistocene Park, as it's known, is the closest we're going to get to the real Jurassic Park, the fictitious dinosaur safari park at the centre of the film Jurassic World.

 

For the last 20 years at least, most scientists have poured scorn on the idea that dinosaurs could be cloned using the method popularised in the first Jurassic Park film — extracting DNA from an insect entombed in resin. A few years ago scientists studying fossils in New Zealand revealed that the bonds that form the backbone of DNA would be entirely degraded — useless — after 6.8 million years. And seeing as dinosaurs last roamed the Earth 65 million years ago, that ruled out any realistic chance of sequencing their genome.

 

But the woolly mammoth is another matter. The animal – a creature roughly the same size as an African elephant with a hairy coat and 13ft-long tusks – died out just 10,000 years ago, so it is entirely possible to sequence its genome. And, in fact, just this year a team of scientists from Sweden, America, Canada and Russia did just that.

 

 Woolly Mammoths

Could the woolly mammoth make a comeback?

That doesn't mean the animal can be cloned: one would need living cells to do that. But scientists are confident they can insert mammoth genes into living elephant cells — essentially swapping out bits of DNA where the elephant sequence differs from the mammoth – and create a cross between the two species, a sort of "hairy elephant".

 

In particular, a team at Harvard University – lead by geneticist Dr George Church – is hoping to produce a type of Asian elephant that can live in the cold climate of the Arctic tundra.

 

The question is why.

 

According to Revive & Restore, an organisation devoted to the genetic rescue of endangered and extinct species, the tundra and swampy forest ecosystem in Siberia was once a vast grassland known as the mammoth steppe, "home to abundant herds of antelope, deer, horses and mammoths". When those herds disappeared, the grassland turned to moss and lichen, and this tundra that emerged is contributing to human-driven climate change – in a big way.

 

Jurassic World: meet the dinosaurs

"Without grasslands to insulate the tundra's permafrost, the permafrost is melting," says Revive & Restore, "releasing greenhouse gases that have been trapped for hundreds of thousands of years. The melting of the world's permafrost is equivalent to burning all the world's forests two-and-a-half times."

 

And that's where Nikita Zimov and his father Sergey come in. Although day-to-day the pair work at the research station – spearheading groundbreaking studies into the causes of Pleistocene extinctions and historic fluctuations in levels of carbon and methane in the atmosphere – their passion is the mammoth park.

 

 The carcass of the world's most well-preserved baby mammoth, named Lyuba, is displayed in Hong Kong on April 10, 2012. Lyuba, whose carcass is 42 thousand years old was found by a reindeer herder in Yamal Peninsula in Russia on 2007

The carcass of the world's most well-preserved baby mammoth, named 

"Step by step, dad came up with the idea of Pleistocene Park," Nikita tells me via Skype from Siberia, "and discovered how animals could transform the vegetation growing in the landscape. The idea is that animals forage on the moss, shrubs, lichens and some grasses growing in patches, and by doing so they trample down the vegetation. Grasses compete with moss.

 

But if you introduce animals, grasses dominate. If you remove them, mosses take over. Grasses help animals, animals help grass. So if you get a high density of animals you can see, year by year, how they transform the landscape."

 

Nikita explains the science like this: the forest is dark green; grass is light green. The lighter the surface, the more heat from the sun is reflected back to space. And over 10s of millions of square miles, the effect on the atmosphere is enormous. There's a huge storage of carbon that accumulated in the permafrost during the Pleistocene era (2 million BC to 10,000 BC) – potentially 500 billion tons, which is more than all the above-ground vegetation on the planet.

 

The problem is, the permafrost is warming up, increasing by about one degree each decade. At Pleistocene Park it's around -3C (26.6F). When it gets to zero, all that organic carbon will be released.

 

"Animals need to eat all year round," Zimov explains. "Everyone thinks snow is cold but it's actually a very good heat insulator. The air temperature above could be -40C (-40F) while under the snow it's -5C (23F). Introduce animals and they trample down that snow, looking for plants. Where animals graze, every single centimetre of snow is trampled at least once or twice a year and it loses its heat-insulating abilities. Pastures freeze so much more with animals present."

 

Nikita is certain that he will see, in his lifetime, something that looks akin to a mammoth roaming the steppe that he and his father have created.

 

 Sergey Zimov of Pleistocene Park, Russia

But Pleistocene Park, which is paid for out of the Zimovs' pockets, is only 14,000 hectares. Although a sizeable piece of land, it's not nearly big enough to have any kind of significant impact on the world's climate. "I'm not saying our park can solve the global warming issue – not in this century – but if we're talking about the next thousand years, Pleistocene Park or a bigger Arctic park would allow carbon emissions to drop to pre-industrial levels."

 

Beth Shapiro, associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California, and the author of How to Clone a Mammoth: The Science of De-Extinction, says: "The Zimovs have shown convincingly that grazing animals cool down the dirt.

 

"Sergey has shown in published papers [his studies have appeared in Science, one of the world's most reputable scientific journals] that the average temperature is 10 to 15 degrees Celsius colder where there are animals than where there aren't. And obviously if the earth is cold – frozen – then it's not releasing carbon into the atmosphere. The challenge is going to be scale. How much of this do you have to do in order to really impact the rate at which the permafrost is thawing?"

 

Is it crazy?

 

Shapiro laughs. "I like Sergey a lot and I like that he's a big thinker and what we need are big-thinking, world-changing, position-changing ideas in how we might slow climate change. Whether this is feasible would depend on a lot of people wanting to do this. I don't know what kind of scale you'd need in order to freeze the soil and slow global warming.

 

 Pleistocene Park, Russia

Waiting for the woolly mammoth: Pleistocene Park, Russia

"He has shown this effect happens with horses and bison, and five species of deer. We have these animals. We don't need to bring anything back to get that effect. But you know, if we have a mammoth – this big grazing herbivore – maybe we can do it faster and better. But I wouldn't count on that happening any time soon."

 

As Shapiro points out, you couldn't just release one of these woolly elephants into the wild, you'd have to have lots of them. And it takes 14 years for a wild elephant to reach sexual maturity. Last year Shapiro bumped into Sergey Zimov, Nikita's father, at a conference in Oxford. "I asked him about the problem of the long generation times of mammoths and he asked whether maybe we could re-introduce woolly rhinos instead."

 

De-extinction, this process of swapping out genomes in existing animals for traits that their ancestors had, but which they could benefit from today, could have other uses, Shapiro says. "Let's say all of the natural habitat for elephants disappeared. If we could swap those cold-surviving genes [of the mammoth] into elephants, so that we could stick elephants into wild places in Europe or Siberia where elephants used to live, we could use this technology — not to bring mammoths back but to save elephants."

The Telegraph.co.uk