Today we will talk about the land of Wrangel. This island is very interesting. A Russian traveler searched for it unsuccessfully, but it was discovered by a Briton and a German. Then the deserted island became a “bone of discord” between the Soviet Union and the United States of America. This land is surrounded by legends. There is even an opinion that one of the colonies of the sinister Gulag was located here. But even without repressive camps, this land was deadly for humans. More than one polar explorer died here. And today the island continues to surprise scientists with new sensational discoveries. How the island was formed, what the relief, climate, flora and fauna are like there - read in this article.
Wrangel Island on the map
This is a fairly large piece of land. Its area is approximately seven and a half thousand square kilometers, and most of it is occupied by mountains. The island itself is located in the Arctic Ocean. Even in simple geographical location Wrangel's land is already hiding its uniqueness. It is a watershed between two large ocean areas, a natural border between Chukotka and East Siberian seas. And along Wrangel Island there is a junction between the Eastern and Western hemispheres of our planet. The one hundred and eightieth meridian, the so-called “date line,” divides the land area into almost equal parts. At least 140 kilometers of water separate the northern coast - the Long Strait. Since 1976, this land has been declared a nature reserve. The last permanent resident died in 2003. Since then, only polar scientists have lived here. Administratively, the island belongs to the district (Iultinsky district).
History of discovery
It is safe to say that the Paleo-Eskimos were the first to discover Wrangel Land. As archaeological excavations carried out in a ravine called Devil prove, people stopped here for camps three and a half thousand years ago. Russian pioneers were told about the existence of the distant land of Umkilir (“islands of polar bears”) by the Chukchi. But two hundred years passed before a European set foot on the deserted and unkind shore. For a long time, the island was considered just a beautiful Chukchi legend. The Russian navigator and statesman Ferdinand Petrovich Wrangel unsuccessfully searched for it in 1820-1824. In 1849, British explorer and traveler Henry Kellett observed two pieces of land in the Chukchi Sea through a telescope. The discoverer named them after himself and his ship Herald. This is how “Kellett Land” and Herald Island (later Wrangel Island) appeared on the world map. But this is not all the adventures of our part of the land, surrounded by the sea.
Why was the discovery named after Wrangel?
The island was considered unknown to Europeans (the Chukchi opinion about Umkilir was not taken into account). The right of discoverer belonged to the one who not only saw the distant shore with the help of a telescope, but set his foot on it. It was a German merchant Eduard Dallmann, who carried out merchant transactions with residents of Chukotka and Alaska. But he was far from thinking of giving any name to the lands he visited. A year later, in 1867, American whaler Thomas Long landed on the island. This brave man was a researcher by vocation and knew a lot about the search for F.P. Wrangel. That’s why he named the island he discovered in his honor. The territory was no man's land for about 14 years. In 1881, an American ship approached Harold and Wrangel Islands. It was looking for members of the De Long polar expedition, which set off to conquer the North Pole in 1879 on the ship Jeanette and went missing. Captain Calvin Hooper landed part of the crew on the island. While the sailors were looking for traces of the missing, the captain planted a US flag on the shore. He named the island New Columbia.
Formation of the archipelago
Until the twentieth century, the governments of Russia and the United States had little interest in who owned two pieces of land lost in the Arctic Ocean. This attitude was facilitated by their “distant” geographical coordinates. Wrangel Island, for example, is the westernmost in the small archipelago, located between 70° and 71° north latitude. The length along the meridian of this place is simply unique: from 179° W. d. to 177° east. d. The archipelago is located very close not only to North America, but also to Asia. This is all that remains of the once existing bridge between the two continents, when the Bering Strait had not yet separated them. Thus, these are islands of mainland origin. And that is why they are also called Beringia. This area was spared by ice ages, and during global warming the islands did not go under water. This circumstance preserved the amazing flora and fauna on Wrangel’s land.
Arctic apple of discord
With the advent of the twentieth century, and at the same time the century of industry, both claimants laid claim to the archipelago. After all, it doesn’t matter where Wrangel Island is located, whether someone lives there and whether economic activities can be carried out. The borders of adjacent states shift to the east or west, respectively, if someone takes possession of the archipelago. In the autumn of 1911, a Russian hydrographic expedition on the ship "Vaigach" landed on Wrangel Island and raised on it Russian flag. And in the summer of 1913, the Canadian brigantine Karluk was trapped in ice and was forced to drift towards the Bering Strait. Part of the team landed on Herald Island, and the other - a large party - on Wrangel. Two members of this expedition reached big land(Alaska), but the rescue expedition reached those in distress only in September 1914.
Development of the archipelago
In 1921, the Canadians decided to “stake out” an archipelago in the Chukchi Sea. After all, this gave the state the opportunity to fish and whaling off their coasts. But the first settlers, consisting of four polar explorers and one Eskimo woman, did not survive the winter (only Ada Blackjack survived). Then the Canadians formed a second colony in 1923. Geologist C. Wells and twelve Eskimos, among them women and children, came to Wrangel Island. Since professional hunters were engaged in food production, the colonists successfully survived the winter. But the USSR government sent the icebreaker “Red October”, equipped with cannons, to the shores of the island. His crew forcibly boarded the settlers and took them to Vladivostok, from where they were later extradited to their homeland. As a result of this trip, two children died.
Wrangel Island is ours!
How did it finally become “domestic”? Although the Wrangel Islands appeared on the map of Russia, the government did not calm down until Russian colonists established themselves there. In 1926, a polar station was founded, headed by researcher G. Ya. Ushakov. Another 59 Chukchi from the villages of Chaplino and Providence settled with him. In 1928, Ukrainian journalist Nikolai Trublaini came there on the icebreaker Litke. He repeatedly described Wrangel Island and its harsh beauty in his books (in particular, “The Path to the Arctic through the Tropics”). Collective farms were supposed to be everywhere in the Land of Soviets, and the Far North was no exception. In 1948, a collective reindeer herding farm was founded - for this purpose, a small herd was brought from the mainland. And in the 70s, musk oxen were introduced from the island of Nunivak. Although evil tongues claim that one of the Gulag camps was based on the archipelago, this is not true. The villages of Ushakovskoye, Perkatkun, Zvezdny and the town. Cape Schmidt was inhabited either by polar explorers or by Chukchi tribes.
Reserved land
Back in 1953, the authorities decided to protect walruses and their rookeries on two islands in the Chukchi Sea. Seven years later, the Regional Executive Committee of Magadan, by its resolution, created a reserve on Wrangel Island. Later (1968) he was upgraded in status. But the Soviet government did not stop there. The reserve of state significance was transformed into nature reserve"Wrangel Islands". The zone is still protected according to the resolution of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR No. 189 of March 23, 1976. The plural in the name of the reserve is not a typo. Came under protection and neighboring island Herald, as well as about 1,430,000 hectares of water area. Ironically, the crisis of the late 1990s greatly contributed to the conservation of nature. Most of the inhabitants were taken to the mainland because there was no means to supply them with fuel and food. The last inhabitant, Vasilina Alpaun, was killed by a polar bear in 2003. And in 2004, both islands were included in the list World Heritage UNESCO.
Relief
A map of Wrangel Island shows that this landmass is quite mountainous. Three almost parallel chains - the Northern, Middle and Southern ranges - end in coastal cliffs. The highest point - Mount Sovetskaya - reaches 1096 meters above sea level. It is located almost in the center of the island. The Low Northern Range extends into a swampy plain called the Academy Tundra. The low-lying shores of the island are dissected by lagoons. There are a lot of lakes and rivers here. But there are no fish in them. Due to the harsh climate, these reservoirs freeze through in winter. However, global warming is noticeable here too. In recent years, schools of pink salmon have begun to actively enter river mouths to spawn. The rugged terrain and polar location created a number of non-melting glaciers on the island.
Climate of Wrangel Island
The polar night here begins in the second ten days of November, and the long-awaited sun appears at the end of January. The luminary does not set beyond the horizon from mid-May to the third ten days of July. But even the fact that the sun constantly illuminates Wrangel Island does not add warmth to the local summer. The temperature even in July does not exceed +3 °C. Snowfall, drizzle and fog are common. Only in the abnormally hot summer of 2007 did the thermometer jump to +14.8 °C (in August). Winters are very frosty, with frequent snowstorms. February and March are especially brutal. The temperature during this period does not rise above -30 °C for many weeks. Cold air masses from the Arctic carry little moisture with them. But in the summer from the northern part Pacific Ocean humid winds blow.
Flora
B. N. Gorodkov, who studied the vegetation cover on the eastern coast of Wrangel Land in 1938, mistakenly classified the island as a zone. Further study of the flora led scientists to the idea that its territory lies in the polar tundra belt. And to be very precise, the classification is as follows: Wrangel subprovince of the Western American zone of the Arctic tundra. The flora has an ancient species composition. Three percent of plants are subendemic. These are Gorodkov's poppy, anthrax, Wrangel's grasshopper and others. It has now been revealed that in terms of the number of endemics, Wrangel Island has no equal in the polar zone. In addition to these plants, which are found only here and nowhere else in the world, more than a hundred rare species grow in the reserve.
Fauna
Harsh climatic conditions do not favor much species diversity. There are absolutely no amphibians, reptiles or freshwater fish on the island. But Wrangel Island, a photo of which is hardly ever complete without a polar bear in the foreground, holds the record for the density of these animals. Judge for yourself: four hundred bears live on an area of about seven and a half thousand square kilometers. And that's not counting the males and cubs! This justifies the Chukchi name of the island - Umkilir. Moreover, the population of this animal is increasing year by year. The polar bear is the main owner of the island. In addition to it, there are introduced reindeer and musk ox. In summer, the wind blows bumblebees, butterflies, mosquitoes and flies from the mainland. The world of birds has about 40 species on the island. Among rodents, Vinogradov's lemming is endemic. In addition to bears, there are other predators: polar fox, wolf, fox, wolverine, ermine. The local walrus rookery is the largest in Russia.
Unique discovery
In the mid-1990s, the Wrangel Island Nature Reserve was on the front pages of scientific journals. And all because paleontologists discovered the remains of mammoths here. But what was important was not the find itself, but its age. It turned out that on the island these elephants covered with thick hair lived and thrived three and a half thousand years ago. But it is known that mammoths became extinct more than ten thousand years ago. What happens? When the Crete-Mycenaean civilization was at its peak in Greece, and in Egypt a living mammoth was walking around Wrangel Island! True, the local subspecies was also distinguished by its small stature - the size of a modern African elephant.
Judging by the finds of archaeologists, the first people appeared here in 1750 BC. e., Wrangel Island was put on maps in the middle of the 19th century. In 1921, the colonization of the island began: first, settlers from the USA and Canada arrived here, and in 1924, the Soviet flag was raised over the island. The first polar station, under the leadership of the Russian Arctic explorer Georgy Ushakov, was created already in 1926.
The geographical position of this territory is surprising: Wrangel Island is divided by the 180th meridian into two almost equal parts, which means it is located simultaneously in both the Eastern and Western Hemispheres. Today the island administratively belongs to the Iultinsky district of Chukotka Autonomous Okrug. Washed by the Arctic Ocean, the reserve is the northernmost in Far East, and in terms of the number of endemic plants and animals (that is, living only in one climatic zone) it has no analogues in the world and even surpasses Greenland.
The territory of the protected zone on Wrangel and Herald islands is almost 800 thousand hectares. Mountains, occupying two-thirds of the territory, are the main type of landscape. The rest is arctic tundra with small lakes and streams, of which there are about 900. Despite the proximity of the Arctic Circle, there are no glaciers on the island.
Flora and fauna of the island
The Chukchi name of Wrangel Island, Umkilir, translates as “island of polar bears.” Indeed, the number of dens of this northern predator here is the largest in the world. Every year, 400–500 bears hibernate on the island. And the history of creating a full-fledged reserve began with another mammal - the musk ox. They were brought in in 1975 in the amount of 20 individuals and after many years of adaptation they took root. There are currently about 900 individuals on the island. Another ungulate, reindeer, was introduced here in the early 1950s, and today it is the only large population of reindeer on the islands (9-10 thousand individuals). The coast is home to walruses that migrate to the Bering Sea for the winter. And in the waters of the reserve, scientists study cetaceans; The most common species are beluga whales and gray whales, and sometimes the bowhead whale. The island is home to Asia's largest colony of white geese. And in general, the fauna is unique in terms of population size. Also inhabited here are the arctic fox, wolverine, wolf, red fox, Siberian lemming and Vinogradov's lemming - the aborigines of this territory.
The harsh climate does not contribute to the diversity of flora: there are no frosts only 20 days a year; The polar night, when the air temperature drops to -30°C and the wind reaches 40 m/s, lasts over three months. However, the island has 417 plant species: more than anywhere else in the Arctic climate zone. These are mainly lichens, mosses and dwarf trees.
Tourist routes
Because of climatic conditions the only village on this territory was officially declared non-residential in 1997: only groups of research scientists and reserve employees are on the island. Visits to the Wrangel Island Nature Reserve are limited, but there are about 10 tourist routes summer and autumn. They include traveling along rivers and ravines on all-terrain vehicles or, very rarely, on foot, but most importantly, watching animals: deer, polar bears... and whales, if you're lucky, of course. You cannot move more than 20 m away from the guide, so as not to meet one-on-one with the ferocious northern predators.
In 2004, the Wrangel Island Nature Reserve was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.
Archaeological finds in the Devil's Ravine area indicate that the first people (Paleo-Eskimos) hunted on the island as early as 1750 BC. e.
Russian pioneers knew about the existence of the island from the middle of the 17th century from stories local residents Chukotka, however geographic Maps he arrived only two hundred years later.
Opening
In 1849, British explorer Henry Kellett discovered in the Chukchi Sea new island and named it Herald Island after his ship "Herald". To the west of the island, Gerald Kellett observed another island and marked it on the map. The island received its first name: “Kellett's Land”.
In 1866 western island visited by the first European - Captain Eduard Dallmann (German: Eduard Dallmann), who conducted trade operations with the residents of Alaska and Chukotka. In 1867, American whaler by profession and explorer by vocation Thomas Long - perhaps unaware of Kellett's previous discovery, or having misidentified the island - named it in honor of the Russian traveler and statesman Ferdinand Petrovich Wrangel. Wrangel knew about the existence of the island from the Chukchi and during 1820-1824 unsuccessfully searched for it.
In 1879, near Wrangel Island, the route of the expedition of George De Long lay, who tried to reach the North Pole on the ship USS Jeannette. De Long's voyage ended in disaster, and in search of him in 1881, the American steam cutter Thomas Corwin, under the command of Calvin L. Hooper, approached the island. Hooper landed a search party on the island and declared it US territory.
In September 1911, the icebreaking steamship Vaygach from the Russian hydrographic expedition of the Arctic Ocean approached Wrangel Island. The Vaygach crew filmed the coast of the island, landed and raised the Russian flag over it.
Canadian Arctic Expedition 1913-1916
On July 13, 1913, the brigantine of the Canadian Arctic expedition “Karluk”, led by anthropologist V. Stefanson, left the port of Nome (Alaska) to explore Herschel Island in the Beaufort Sea. On August 13, 1913, 300 kilometers from its destination, the Karluk was caught in ice and began a slow drift to the west. On September 19, six people, including Stefanson, went hunting, but due to ice drift they were no longer able to return to the ship. They had to make their way to Cape Barrow. Later, accusations were made against Stefanson that he deliberately abandoned the ship under the pretext of hunting in order to explore the islands of the Canadian Arctic archipelago.
25 people remained on the Karluk - the crew, members of the expedition and hunters. The brigantine's drift continued along the route of George De Long's barque Jeannette until it was crushed by ice on January 10, 1914. The first batch of sailors, on behalf of Bartlett and under the command of Bjarne Mamen, set out for Wrangel Island, but mistakenly reached Herald Island. The first mate of the Karluk, Sandy Anderson, remained on Herald Island with three sailors. All four died, presumably due to food poisoning. Another party, including Alistair McCoy (a member of Shackleton's Antarctic expedition in 1907-1909), undertook an independent trip to Wrangel Island (a distance of 130 km) and went missing. The remaining 17 people under the command of Barlett managed to reach Wrangel Island and went ashore in Draghi Bay. In 1988, traces of their camp were found here and a memorial sign was erected. Captain Bartlett (who had experience participating in the expeditions of Robert Peary) and the Eskimo hunter Kataktovik together set off across the ice to the mainland for help. Within a few weeks they successfully reached the Alaskan coast, but ice conditions prevented an immediate rescue expedition.
The Russian icebreakers "Taimyr" and "Vaigach" twice in the summer of 1914 (August 1-5, then August 10-12) tried to break through to help, but were unable to overcome the ice. Several attempts by the American cutter “Bear” were also unsuccessful.
Of the 15 people remaining on Wrangel Island, three died: two died due to pemmican poisoning, the third was killed. The survivors earned their living by hunting and were rescued only in September 1914 by an expedition on the Canadian schooner King & Wing.
Stefanson's expeditions of 1921-1924
Inspired by the survival experience of the Karluk crew and the prospects for marine fishing off Wrangel Island, Stefanson launched a campaign to colonize the island. To support his enterprise, Stefanson tried to obtain official status from first the Canadian and then the British government, but his idea was rejected. The refusal, however, did not prevent Stefanson from declaring support for the authorities and then raising the British flag over Wrangel Island. This ultimately led to a diplomatic scandal.
On September 16, 1921, a settlement of five colonists was founded on the island: 22-year-old Canadian Alan Crawford, Americans Halle, Maurer (participant of the Karluk expedition), Knight, and an Eskimo woman, Ada Blackjack, as a seamstress and cook. The expedition was poorly equipped, as Stefanson relied on hunting as one of his main sources of supply. Having successfully survived the first winter and having lost only one dog (out of seven), the colonists hoped for the arrival of a ship with supplies and a replacement in the summer. Due to severe ice conditions, the ship was unable to approach the island and the people remained for another winter.
In September 1922, the White Army gunboat Magnit (a former messenger ship armed during Civil War) under the command of Lieutenant D. A. von Dreyer, but the ice did not give her such an opportunity. Opinions differ about the purpose of Magnit's campaign to Wrangel Island - it is to suppress the activities of Stefanson's enterprise (expressed by contemporaries and participants in the events), or, on the contrary, to provide assistance to him for a fee (expressed in the newspaper of the FSB of the Russian Federation in 2008). Due to the military defeat of the White movement in the Far East, the ship never returned to Vladivostok, and the Magnit crew went into exile.
After the hunt failed and food supplies ran low, on January 28, 1923, three polar explorers went to the mainland for help. Nobody saw them again. Knight, who remained on the island, died of scurvy in April 1923. Only 25-year-old Ada Blackjack survived. She managed to survive alone on the island until the ship arrived on August 19, 1923.
In 1923, 13 settlers remained on the island for the winter - American geologist Charles Wells and twelve Eskimos, including women and children. Another child was born on the island during the wintering period. In 1924, concerned by the news of the creation of a foreign colony on Russian island, the USSR government sent the gunboat “Red October” (the former Vladivostok port icebreaker “Nadezhny”, on which guns were installed) to Wrangel Island.
"Red October" left Vladivostok on July 20, 1924 under the command of hydrographer B.V. Davydov. On August 20, 1924, the expedition raised the Soviet flag on the island and removed the settlers. On the way back, on September 25, in the Long Strait near Cape Schmidt, the icebreaker was hopelessly jammed by ice, but a storm helped it free. Overcoming heavy ice led to excessive fuel consumption. By the time the ship dropped anchor in Providence Bay, there was only 25 minutes of fuel left, and there was no fresh water at all. The icebreaker returned to Vladivostok on October 29, 1924.
Soviet-American and then Chinese-American negotiations on the further return of the colonists to their homeland through Harbin took a long time. Three did not live to see their return - the expedition leader, Charles Wells, died in Vladivostok from pneumonia; two children died along the subsequent journey.
Development
In 1926, a polar station was created on Wrangel Island under the leadership of G. A. Ushakov. Together with Ushakov, 59 people landed on the island, mostly Eskimos who had previously lived in the villages of Providence and Chaplino. In 1928, an expedition was made to the island on the icebreaker “Litke”, on which the Ukrainian writer and journalist Nikolai Trublaini worked as a boiler room attendant, who described Wrangel Island in a number of his books, in particular “To the Arctic - through the Tropics”. In 1948, a small group of domesticated reindeer was brought to the island and a branch of the reindeer-breeding state farm was organized. In 1953, administrative authorities adopted a resolution on the protection of walrus rookeries on Wrangel Island, and in 1960, by decision of the Magadan Regional Executive Committee, a long-term reserve was created, which was transformed in 1968 into a reserve of republican significance.
Gulag
In 1987, former prisoner Efim Moshinsky published a book in which he claimed that he was in a “corrective labor camp” on Wrangel Island and met Raoul Wallenberg and other foreign prisoners there. In reality, contrary to legend, there were no Gulag camps on Wrangel Island.
Reserve
In 1975, musk oxen from Nunivak Island were introduced to the island, and the executive committee of the Magadan region allocated the lands of the islands for a future reserve. In 1976, to study and protect the natural complexes of the Arctic islands, the Wrangel Island Nature Reserve was founded, which also included the small neighboring Herald Island. In connection with the reserve, a reserve protection zone 5 nautical miles wide was established around the islands. The total area of the reserve was 795.6 thousand hectares. In 1978, the Scientific Department of the reserve was organized, whose employees began a systematic study of the flora and fauna of the islands.
In 1992, the radar station was closed and the only one left on the island locality- Ushakovskoye village. In 1997, at the proposal of the governor of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug and the State Committee for Ecology of Russia, the area of the reserve was expanded to include the water area surrounding the island with a width of 12 nautical miles, by order of the Russian government No. 1623-r dated November 15, 1997, and in 1999, around the already protected water area, by decree of the governor of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug No. 91 dated May 25, 1999, a protective zone 24 nautical miles wide was organized.
The island's area is about 7670 km², of which about 4700 km² is mountainous. The shores are low, dissected by lagoons, separated by sand spits from the sea. In the central part of the island the terrain is mountainous. There are small glaciers and medium-sized lakes, arctic tundra.
Relief
The island's topography is highly dissected. The mountains occupying most of the island form three parallel chains - the Northern Range, the Middle Range and the Southern Range - ending in the west and east with coastal rocky cliffs. The most powerful is the Middle Ridge, in which the most high point islands - Mount Sovetskaya (1096 m). The northern ridge is the lowest, it turns into a wide swampy plain called the Academy Tundra. The southern ridge is low and runs close to the sea coast. In 1952, a mountain in the central part of Wrangel Island was named after Leonid Vasilyevich Gromov.
Between the ridges there are valleys with numerous rivers. In total, the island has more than 140 rivers and streams with a length of more than 1 km and 5 rivers with a length of more than 50 km. Of the approximately 900 lakes, most of which are located in the Academy Tundra (north of the island), 6 lakes have an area greater than 1 km². On average, the depth of lakes is no more than 2 m. Based on their origin, lakes are divided into thermokarst lakes, which include the majority, oxbow lakes (in the valleys of large rivers), glacial, dammed and lagoon lakes. The largest of them are: Kmo, Komsomol, Gagachye, Zapovednoe.
Climate
The climate is harsh. Most During the year, masses of cold arctic air with low moisture and dust content move over the area. In summer, warmer and more humid air from the Pacific Ocean comes from the southeast. Dry and highly heated air masses from Siberia periodically arrive.
The polar day lasts from the 2nd ten days of May to the 20th of July, the polar night - from the 2nd ten days of November to the end of January.
Winters are long, characterized by persistent frosty weather, strong north winds. average temperature January -22.3 °C, especially cold months - February and March. During this period, the temperature stays below −30 °C for weeks, and there are frequent snowstorms with wind speeds of up to 40 m/s and higher.
Summer is cool, there are frosts and snowfalls, the average July temperature ranges from +2 °C to +2.5 °C. In the center of the island, fenced off from the sea by mountains, summers are warmer and drier due to better air heating and hair dryers.
The average relative humidity is about 82%, the annual precipitation is about 180 mm.
Flora
The first researcher of the vegetation of Wrangel Island B. N. Gorodkov, who studied in 1938 East Coast islands, classified it as a zone of arctic and polar deserts. After a complete exploration of the entire island from the 2nd half of the 20th century. it belongs to the arctic tundra subzone of the tundra zone. Despite the relatively small size of Wrangel Island, due to the sharp regional characteristics of its vegetation, it stands out as a special Wrangel subprovince of the Wrangel-Western American province of the Arctic tundra.
The vegetation of Wrangel Island is distinguished by a rich ancient species composition. The number of species of vascular plants exceeds 310 (for example, on the much larger New Siberian Islands there are only 135 such species; on the islands Severnaya Zemlya about 65, in Franz Josef Land less than 50). The flora of the island is rich in relics and relatively poor in plants common in other subpolar regions, of which, according to various estimates, there are no more than 35-40%.
About 3% of plants are subendemic (silver grass, Gorodkov poppy, Wrangel's cinquefoil) and endemic (Wrangel's bluegrass, Ushakov's poppy, Wrangel's cinquefoil, Lapland poppy). In addition to them, another 114 species of rare and very rare plants grow on Wrangel Island.
Similar composition flora allows us to conclude that the original Arctic vegetation in this area of ancient Beringia was not destroyed by glaciers, and the sea prevented the penetration of later migrants from the south.
The modern vegetation cover on the territory of the reserve is almost everywhere open and low-growing. Sedge-moss tundra predominates. IN mountain valleys and in the intermountain basins of the central part of Wrangel Island there are areas of willow thickets (Richardson's willow) up to 1 m high.
The fauna of the island as a whole is not rich in species, which is due to the harsh climatic conditions.
Fish in the coastal waters of the islands have not been studied enough. There are no fish in the freshwater reservoirs of the island.
At least 20 species of birds regularly nest on the island, another 20 species are vagrants or irregular nesters for the reserve.
The most numerous birds are white geese, which are among the rare animals. They form one main colony in the valley of the Tundra River in the center of Wrangel Island and several small colonies. Passerines are also numerous, represented by snow buntings and Lapland plantains. Brent geese come to the reserve for nesting and molting. Also among the inhabitants of the reserve are eider ducks, Icelandic sandpipers, tules, glaucous gulls, fork-tailed gulls, long-tailed skuas, and snowy owls. Less common in the reserve are dunlins, pouters, Arctic terns, skuas, red-throated loons, crows, and redpolls.
Quite often, birds from North America fly or are blown into the reserve, including sandhill cranes that regularly visit Wrangel Island, as well as Canada geese and various small American passerines, including finches (myrtle warblers, savannah buntings, black-browed buntings, juncos, white-crowned zonotrichia). .
The mammal fauna of the reserve is poor. The endemic Vinogradov's lemming, previously considered a subspecies of the hoofed lemming, the Siberian lemming and the arctic fox live here permanently. Periodically, and in significant numbers, polar bears appear, whose maternity dens are located within the boundaries of the reserve. At times, wolves, wolverines, stoats and foxes enter the reserve. Along with people, sled dogs settled on Wrangel Island. A house mouse has appeared and lives in residential buildings. Reindeer and musk ox were brought to the island for acclimatization.
Reindeer lived here in the distant past, and the modern herd comes from domestic reindeer brought from the Chukotka Peninsula in 1948, 1954, 1967, 1968, 1975. The deer population is maintained at up to 1.5 thousand heads.
There is evidence that musk oxen lived on Wrangel Island in the distant past. In our time, a herd of 20 heads was brought in April 1975 from the American island of Nunivak.
The island has the largest walrus rookery in Russia. Seals live in coastal waters.
In the mid-1990s, in the journal Nature, one could read about a stunning discovery made on the island. Reserve employee Sergei Vartanyan discovered the remains of mammoths here, the age of which was determined to be from 7 to 3.5 thousand years. Despite the fact that, according to popular belief, mammoths went extinct everywhere 10-12 thousand years ago. Subsequently, it was discovered that these remains belonged to a special, relatively small subspecies that inhabited Wrangel Island back in the days when Egyptian pyramids, and which disappeared only during the reign of Tutankhamun and the heyday of the Mycenaean civilization. This places Wrangel Island among the most important paleontological monuments on the planet.
No, the island is not named after the famous Russian military leader Pyotr Nikolaevich Wrangel.
It is a rare case when even in a dry academic reference on Wikipedia, the history of this island reads like a detective story.
So, Wrangel Island is a piece of land surrounded by ice in the Arctic Ocean.
The area is about 7670 square meters. km. Extremely severe natural conditions. The average temperature in July is +3 degrees. In January-February it often drops to -37.
The first people, the Paleo-Eskimos, hunted on this island as early as 1750 BC. It is unlikely that the climate of those places was very different from what can be found now, therefore, these hunters had a very difficult time.
More than two thousand years passed before this island was first depicted on maps. The island received its first name, “Land of Kellett” in 1849, thanks to the English navigator Henry Kellett, who described it during his expedition to the Chukchi Sea.
Another 16 years passed and in 1866 the crew of a merchant ship under the leadership of Captain Eduard Dahlmann landed on the island.
The next year, in 1867, by a strange coincidence, the island received a different name, with which it is included in all maps of the world. American explorer and whaler Thomas Long, either unaware of Kellett's discovery, or simply due to a navigation error, names the island in honor of the famous Russian traveler, geographer, statesman, admiral, Ferdinand Petrovich Wrangel.
It may seem strange that an American would give a new island the name of a Russian traveler, but given the wide fame of Ferdinand Petrovich, who at that time already had three trips around the world and many other merits, the action seems quite normal.
In 1881, Captain Hooper landed a search party on the island in order to rescue the expedition of George De Long, which went to the North Pole on the ship Jeannette two years earlier and suffered a disaster. At the same time, Captain Hooper plants an American flag on the island and proclaims it the territory of the North American United States. Wrangel Island existed in this status for 30 years, until already in the 20th century, in 1911, the crew of the icebreaking steamship (!) Vaygach approached the island, took photographs of its shore, and planted the Russian flag, about which balls, a corresponding entry was made in the logbook.
1914
For about six months, from January to September, 15 crew members of the brigantine Karluk lived on the island awaiting a rescue expedition after their ship was crushed by ice 130 kilometers from the coast.
1921
Canadian polar explorer Williamur Stefanson establishes a settlement of five colonists on the island, proclaims the territory the property of Great Britain and raises the flag of the United Kingdom.
For two years the colonists lived on the island without contact with the outside world. Several ships, which during this time tried to bring provisions and equipment to the island, were unable to pass through the ice. And only in August 1923, the only survivor, 25-year-old Ada Blackjack, who had lived in absolute solitude for the last six months, was rescued from the island. The remaining colonists died.
In 1923, another attempt was made to colonize the island, this time by American geologist Charles Wells, who founded a camp, bringing with him 12 experienced inhabitants far north, with women and children. The colony existed for several months, until August 20, 1924, when it was taken out in its entirety by the Soviet warship Red October.
1926
A permanent settlement of 59 people is founded on Wrangel Island under the leadership of Soviet Arctic explorer Georgy Ushakov. The foundation of the polar station is being laid.
1948-1960s.
Reindeer were brought to the island from the mainland, a reindeer herding state farm was organized, 2 more settlements were founded, and several military infrastructure facilities were built.
One of the residents of the village, V. Pridatko-Dolin, describes the state of the settlement in his book “Ushakovskoe: how was it?”:
By the end of the 1970s, there was a village council, a boarding school, a kindergarten and a boiler room, a club-cinema, a reserve office (and later the Wrangel Island reserve) and a modest natural history museum, a store (TZP) and an underground glacier for storing meat products, temporary corral (for the autumn corral and slaughter of deer), post office, hospital, Rogers Bay polar station (Rogers), Rogers airport (for AN-2, MI-2, MI-6, MI-8) and a small air refueling station, a fuel and lubricants warehouse and bulk coal storage facilities, a library, a diesel power station and a bathhouse, and there was electricity in the houses.
During navigation, a temporary berth for barges was in operation. Since the beginning of the 1980s, a radiotelephone communication station, a border outpost, a canteen for reserve employees and air crews, television operated, and a lighthouse was restored on the Ushakov Spit.
But already at the end of the 1980s, military personnel and permanent residents began to leave the island due to lack of funding; in 1992, after the collapse of the USSR, the radar station was closed.
In 1997, all remaining residents of the village, except those who refused to leave their usual home, were transported to Cape Schmidt. A few years later, one of the residents of the village returned back, but in 2003 she died as a result of an attack polar bear.
Only one Neolithic site of Paleo-Eskimos is known - on south coast islands. Archaeologists did not find bones of land animals in the cultural layer, which indicates that the diet of the ancient population of the island consisted exclusively of marine animals and fish. When the islands were discovered by Europeans, there were no local residents here for a long time.
There are direct indications that the presence big island M.V. Lomonosov also spoke in this sector of the Arctic. In 1763, the great Russian scientist indicated on a map of the Arctic in the area north of Chukotka a certain island, which he called “Doubtful”. From this approximate name to modern map The island retains the name of the bay - Doubtful.
In 1820, the Russian government equipped north coast There were two expeditions to Siberia: the first was looking for the legendary “Sannikov Land”, the second, under the command of the outstanding Russian navigator and polar explorer Ferdinand Petrovich Wrangel (1796/1797-1870), went in search of the completely mythical “Andreev Land”.
For four years, Wrangel explored the North, trying to find an unknown land. His persistence was also explained by the fact that the Chukchi had long known about the existence of the island. The Chukotka kamakai (leader) told Wrangel that near the mouth of one of the rivers, on clear summer days, high snow-capped mountains were visible in the north. The Chukchi, who themselves were unable to reach the unknown land, formed a legend that the Krekhai Kamakai of the fabulous Onkilon tribe, a people who supposedly lived earlier on the shores of the ocean, went to this land along with the entire tribe.
The stories of the Chukchi gave Wrangel additional strength, and in 1823 he set off towards an unknown land on a dog sled. He did not reach the ground, but he saw the mountains and put them on the map. Later this land was called “Wrangel Land”.
In 1849, the English captain-polar explorer Henry Kellett on his ship searched for the expedition of fellow countryman John Franklin frozen in the ice and also saw the peaks of the mountains of “Wrangel Land”.
The first European to become personally convinced of the reality of the island’s existence in 1867 was the American whaler Thomas Long. The enlightened whale hunter knew about “Wrangel Land,” and he named the island after the Russian explorer.
The first person to set foot on this island was an American: in 1881, the crew of the US ship Thomas Corwin visited here, also searching for the captive ship. The Americans planted their flag here, called the island “New Caledonia” and declared it property of the United States.
Only in 1911 did the Russian hydrographic vessel “Vaigach” arrive here and manage to circumnavigate the entire island.
In 1924, the Soviet flag was raised on the island, American claims to the island were rejected, and the planned development of this completely wild land began. At various times, experiments were carried out here on breeding domestic reindeer, and even a reindeer herding farm was created. Three villages were built, an unpaved military airfield was built, a military radar station was installed, rock crystal was mined, and musk ox acclimatization was carried out.
Population
In addition to scientists and military personnel, the island was inhabited mainly by the Chukchi, who were resettled on the island to organize hunting for arctic fox, walrus, polar bear, white geese, and geese.
Currently, the villages on the island are abandoned, there is no permanent population, the island is periodically visited by border guards and rare groups of tourists.
Nature
The Wrangel Island State Nature Reserve was established by a decree of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR in 1976.
Currently, the Wrangel Island Nature Reserve is the northernmost of the environmental protection zones in Russia. Its total area is 2.3 million hectares, including water areas - 1.4 million hectares. The reserve is located on two islands of the Chukchi Sea - Wrangel and Herald. Two-thirds of the territory is mountains. The climate here is extremely harsh.
The purpose of the reserve is to organize the protection of the natural complex of the island, its unique ecological systems, both on land and in the ocean. For this purpose, a five-kilometer security zone was created around the island, the reindeer herding farm and the radar station were closed.
The status of the reserve helps preserve the polar bear population: this is the only place in Russia where female bears from 330 to 600 individuals come to set up a maternity den and give birth to offspring. Here they protect the walrus, which is hunted by poachers from several countries.
The most numerous species of pinnipeds here is the Pacific walrus. During the summer feeding period, the largest coastal rookeries in the Chukchi Sea are formed here: up to 80-100 thousand walruses.
In total, 15 species of mammals live on Wrangel Island, including seals (ringed seal, bearded seal), Siberian and hoofed lemmings, arctic fox, fox, wolf, wolverine, and ermine. Having found its way here along with people, the house mouse has taken root in abandoned buildings.
There are a lot of birds: 400 species, among which the most numerous are kittiwake gull, thick-billed guillemot, brent goose, puffin, loon, Icelandic sandpiper, Arctic guillemot, Bering cormorant, long-tailed skua. Here is the largest colony of white goose in Eurasia.
The waters around the island are poorly studied. As summer draws to a close, gray whales, killer whales, beluga whales, humpback whales, fin whales and bowhead whales come to the island's shores to feed and migrate. There are no fish in hundreds of lakes on the island.
Surprisingly, there are even insects on Wrangel Island: 31 species of spiders, 58 species of beetles, 42 species of butterflies. Such a diversity of invertebrate species, concentrated in one place in the Arctic tundra, is characteristic only of Wrangel Island.
Despite the harsh climate and other conditions natural area Arctic tundra, 417 species and subspecies of plants grow here, including many endemics. There are species preserved from the Pleistocene era: anesthesia, Wrangel's cinquefoil, Wrangel's cinquefoil, Wrangel's bluegrass, Gorodkov's poppy, Lapland poppy. All these species are included in the Red Book of Russia.
The domestic reindeer brought here for breeding has already gone completely wild and multiplied: its number is 1.5 thousand individuals. The 20 musk oxen released onto the island in 1975 have also successfully settled in, and there are now about 700 of them here.
When people still lived here, traditional nature management for the Chukchi was allowed in the reserve - and this was the only exception for Soviet reserves: they engaged in hunting and fishing on an extremely limited scale. Small tour groups coming here are allowed to travel around the island along coastline, it is prohibited to fly by helicopter at an altitude below 2 km, observation of musk oxen, deer, gray whales, tundra and seabirds is allowed. When ice conditions allow, visitors to the reserve can take several water routes by boat along Somnitelnaya Bay and Krasina Bay.
general information
Location:, between the East Siberian and Chukchi seas.
Administrative affiliation: Shmidtovsky district of the Russian Federation.
Distance from the mainland (northern coast of Chukotka): 140 km - Longa Strait.
Origin: mainland.
Settlements (all abandoned): Ushakovskoe, Zvezdny, Perkatkun.
Largest rivers: Claire, Mammoth, Unknown, Tundra.
Lakes: Gagachye, Zapovednoe, Kmo, Komsomol.
Numbers
Area: 7670 km2.
Population: no permanent population.
Highest point: Mount Sovetskaya (1096 m).
Rivers: 1,400 rivers and streams more than 1 km long, 5 rivers more than 50 km long.
Lakes: about 900, thermokarst, total area - 80 km 2
Climate and weather
Arctic.
Active cyclonic activity.
Average annual temperature:-11.3°C.
Coldest month: February (-24.9°C).
Warmest month: July (+2.5°C).
Frost-free period: 20-25 days a year.
Average annual precipitation: 152 mm.
Polar day - from the 2nd decade of May to the 20th of July; polar night - from the 2nd ten days of November to the end of January.
Blizzards with wind speeds of up to 40 m/s and higher.
Relative humidity: 82%.
Attractions
Reserve "Wrangel Island"
Mountain Sovetskaya
Mount Perkatkun
White goose colony
Pacific walrus rookery
Bird markets
Paleo-Eskimo site (Devil's Ravine)
Landing site of Canadian settlers at the mouth of the Predator River
Doubtful Bay
Lagoon Traitor
Krasina Bay
Curious facts
F.P. Wrangel was widely known as a fierce opponent of the sale of Alaska to the United States of America and did not hesitate to openly express his disagreement with Emperor Alexander II.
Until the mid-1960s, there was no border post on the island. In 1967, hundreds of butchered walrus carcasses were discovered on the northeastern coast: the result of poaching by foreign fishing vessels. After this, an outpost appeared here, which served until the end of the 1990s.
Since the 1980s. The number of musk ox on the island increased steadily; by 2003, the population numbered 600 individuals. The reason is that musk oxen are more adapted to the living conditions on Wrangel Island than deer: in winter, the musk ox survives on accumulated fat reserves and does not need a large amount of pasture.
Devil's Ravine is a Paleo-Eskimo site on Wrangel Island, discovered in 1975. Valuable artifacts dating back to 1750 BC were found here. - the time when the last mammoths died out.
In 1993, a number of scientific publications reported that an employee of the Wrangel Island Nature Reserve discovered the remains of a small mammoth, 3.5-7 thousand years old, while mammoths became extinct 10-12 thousand years ago. This means that the very last mammoths on Earth lived on Wrangel Island.
Contrary to popular belief, there were never Gulag forced labor camps on Wrangel Island.
The biological diversity of plant communities on Wrangel Island has no equal among the Arctic island territories and surpasses in this regard the entire Canadian Arctic archipelago.
The reserve on Wrangel Island contains the world's largest walrus rookeries: up to 75 thousand accumulate on Cape Blossom, and up to 20 thousand on Somnitelnaya Spit.
The walrus is able to stay under water without air for up to 10 minutes.
Vinogradov's lemming, endemic to Wrangel Island, builds complex burrows with an area of up to 30 m2, with three dozen entrances and a depth of up to half a meter.
