Wrangel Island: nature reserve, location on the map of Russia, climate, coordinates. Flora and fauna of Wrangel Island

Today we will speak about the land of Wrangel. This island is very interesting. He was unsuccessfully looked for a Russian traveler, and the British and the German opened. Then the deserted island became an "apple 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 to humans. Not one polar explorer died here. And today the island continues to amaze scientists with new sensational discoveries. How the island was formed, what is the relief, climate, animal and plant world there? Read in this article.

Wrangel Island on the map

This is a fairly large area of land. Its area is about 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 the simple geographical location of Wrangel's land, its uniqueness is already hidden. It is a watershed between two large water areas of the ocean, the natural boundary between the Chukchi and the East Siberian seas. And along the island of Wrangel is the junction between the Eastern and Western hemispheres of our planet. The one hundred and eightieth meridian, the so-called "line of change of dates," divides the land into almost equal parts. From the northern coast of Chukotka, the island is separated by at least 140 kilometers of water - the Long Strait. Since 1976, this land is declared a reserve. The last permanent resident died in 2003. Since then, only scientists-polar explorers live here. Administratively, the island belongs to the Chukotka Autonomous District (Iultinsky District).

History of the discovery

We can say with certainty that the land of Wrangel was first discovered by the Paleo-Eskimos. As the archaeological excavations carried out in the ravine with the name of the Devils prove, people stopped here for camps three and a half thousand years ago. Russian pioneers were told about the existence of the remote land Umkilir ("islands of polar bears") Chukchi. But two hundred years passed before a European foot set foot on a deserted and unflattering shore. For a long time the island was considered just a beautiful Chukchi legend. In 1820-1824 he was unsuccessfully searched for by Russian navigator and statesman Ferdinand Petrovich Wrangel. In 1849, a researcher and traveler from Britain, Henry Kellett, observed two pieces of land in the Chukchi Sea in a telescope. The discoverer named them in honor of himself and his ship Herald. Thus appeared the "Land of Kellett" and the island of Herald (later Wrangel Island) on the world map. But this is not all the adventures of our part of the land, surrounded by the sea.

Why the discovery was named after Wrangel

The island was considered unknown to Europeans (the opinion of the Chukchi about Umkilir was not taken into account). The right of the discoverer belonged to someone who not only saw the distant shore with a telescope, but stepped on it with his foot. It was a German trader Edward Dallmann, who conducted merchant operations with the inhabitants of Chukotka and Alaska. But he was far from thinking about how to call the lands he visited. A year later, in 1867, a whaler from America, Thomas Long landed on the island. By vocation this brave man was an explorer, he knew much about the search for FP Wrangel. Therefore, he named the island he had discovered in his honor. The territory was no man's land for about 14 years. In 1881 an American ship approached the islands of Harold and Wrangel. It sought members of the polar expedition of De Long, who went to conquer the North Pole in 1879 on the ship "Jeanette" and disappeared without a trace. Captain Kelvin Hooper landed on the island part of the team. While the sailors were searching for missing traces of the missing, the captain hoisted the US flag on the shore. He called the island New Columbia.

Education of the Archipelago

Until the twentieth century, the governments of Russia and the United States were not very interested in who owned the two scraps of land lost in the Arctic Ocean. This attitude was facilitated by their "distant" geographical coordinates. Wrangel Island, for example, the westernmost in a small archipelago, is located between 70 ° and 71 ° north latitude. The length along the meridian in this place is simply unique: from 179 ° W. Up to 177 ° c. Etc. The archipelago is very close not only from North America, but also from Asia. This is all that remains of the once existing jumper between the two continents, when the Bering Strait has not yet separated them. Thus, these are islands of continental origin. And that's why they are called Beringia. This area was spared by glacial periods, and during global warming the islands did not go under water. This circumstance preserved on the land of Wrangel an amazing animal and plant world.

Polar apple of discord

With the advent of the twentieth century, and at the same time and centuries of industry, both claimants claimed their rights to the archipelago. It does not matter where Wrangel Island is, whether someone lives there and whether it is possible to conduct economic activities. The borders of adjacent states are shifted to the east or west respectively, if someone takes possession of the archipelago. In the fall of 1911, the Russian hydrographic expedition on the Vaigach ship landed on Wrangel Island and raised a Russian flag on it. And in the summer of 1913 the Canadian brigantine "Karluk" was clamped with ice and was forced to drift towards the Bering Strait. Part of the team landed on the island of the Herald, and another - a large party - on Wrangel. Two members of this expedition reached the big land (Alaska), but the rescue expedition came to the disaster only in September 1914.

Mastering the archipelago

In 1921 the Canadians decided to "stake out" the archipelago in the Chukchi Sea. After all, it gave the state the possibility of fishing and whaling from their shores. But the first settlers in the four polar explorers and one Eskimo woman did not suffer the winter (only Ada Blackjack survived). Then the Canadians in 1923 formed the second colony. On the Wrangel island came the geologist Charles Wells and twelve Eskimos, among them women and children. Since professional hunters engaged in the production of food, the colonists successfully survived the winter. But the government of the USSR sent an icebreaker "Red October", equipped with guns, to the shores of the island. His team forcibly lifted the settlers on board and took them to Vladivostok, where later they were extradited to their homeland. As a result of this trip, two children were killed.

Wrangel Island is ours!

How did he become "domestic" finally? Although the Wrangel Islands appeared on the map of Russia, the government did not rest until Russian colonists became established there. In 1926 the polar station was founded, which was headed by the researcher G. Ya. Ushakov. Together with him settled another 59 Chukchi from the villages of Chaplin and Providence. In 1928, the Ukrainian journalist Nikolai Trublaini came to the icebreaker Litke. He repeatedly in his books (in particular, "The Way to the Arctic through the Tropics") described Wrangel Island and its harsh beauty. The collective farms were to be everywhere in the Land of Soviets, and the Far North was no exception. In 1948, the reindeer herding collective farm was founded - for this purpose a small herd was brought from the mainland. And in the 70's introduced the musk oxen from the island of Nunivak. Although evil languages and argue that the archipelago was based one of the camps of the Gulag, it is not true. Settlements Ushakovskoe, Perkatkun, Star and pgt. Cape Schmidt were populated either by polar explorers or by Chukchi tribes.

Protected Land

Back in 1953, the authorities decided to protect walruses and their rookeries on two islands in the Chukchi Sea. Seven years later, the Oblast Executive Committee of Magadan established a sanctuary on Wrangel Island with its resolution. Later (1968) he was promoted in status. But the Soviet government did not stop there. The reserve of state significance in 1976 was transformed into the natural reserve "Islands of Wrangel". The zone is still protected according to the resolution of the Council of Ministers of the RSFSR under No. 189 of March 23, 1976. The plural in the name of the reserve is not a blur. The neighboring Herald Island, as well as about 1,430,000 hectares of water, fell under protection. Ironically, the crisis of the late 1990s contributed greatly to the conservation of nature. Most of the inhabitants were taken to the big land, as there was no means to supply them with fuel and food. The last inhabitant Vasilina Alpahun was bitten by a polar bear in 2003. And in 2004, both islands were included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Relief

The map of Wrangel Island shows that this land area is rather mountainous. Three almost parallel chains - the Northern, Middle and Southern ranges - are cut off by coastal cliffs. The highest point - Mount Sovietskaya - reaches 1096 meters above sea level. It is located almost in the center of the island. The Low North Range turns into a boggy plain, called the Tundra of the Academy. The low banks of the island are cut by lagoons. There are a lot of lakes and rivers here. But there are no fish in them. Because of the severe climate, these reservoirs freeze through in winter. However, global warming is also noticeable here. In recent years the mouths of pink salmon began to actively enter the mouth of the rivers. Crossed relief and polar location created on the island a number of non-glacial glaciers.

The climate of Wrangel Island

Polar night here comes in the second decade of November, and the long-awaited sun is shown at the end of January. The light does not go beyond the horizon from the middle of May to the third decade of July. But even the fact that the sun constantly illuminates Wrangel Island, does not give warmth to the local summer. The temperature even in July does not exceed +3 ° C. There are often snowfalls, drizzle and fog. Only in the abnormally hot summer of 2007 the thermometer's column jumped to +14,8 ° C (in August). Winters are very frosty, with frequent snowstorms. Especially the month of February and March. The temperature does not rise above -30 ° C during this period for many weeks. Cold air masses from the Arctic carry little moisture. But in summer, moist winds blow from the northern part of the Pacific Ocean.

Flora

BN Gorodkov, who studied vegetation in 1938 on the eastern coast of Wrangel's land, erroneously attributed the island to the zone of the arctic deserts. Further study of the flora led scientists to the idea that its territory lies in the belt of the polar tundra. And to be very precise, the classification is as follows: Wrangel's subprovince of the Western American zone of the Arctic tundra. Flora is an ancient species composition. Three percent of plants are subendemic. This is Poppy Gorodkov, the drillard, the Wrangel wort and others. At present, it is revealed that the number of endemics in the island of Wrangel is unparalleled in the polar zone. In addition to these plants, which are found only here and nowhere else in the world, more than one hundred rare species grow in the reserve.

Fauna

Harsh climatic conditions do not favor a particular species diversity. There are absolutely no amphibians, reptiles and freshwater fish on the island. But the Wrangel Island, whose photo hardly ever does without a white bear in the foreground, is the record holder for the density of these animals. Judge for yourself: on the area of about seven and a half thousand square kilometers four hundred bears live together. And this is not counting males and cubs! That justifies the Chukchi name of the island - Umkilir. And the population of this beast increases year by year. The polar bear is the main owner of the island. In addition to it, there are imported reindeer and musk ox. In summer, wind blows from the mainland bumblebees, butterflies, mosquitoes and flies. The world of birds has about 40 species on the island. Of 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 Reserve was on the front pages of scientific journals. And all because paleontologists have discovered here the remains of mammoths. But it was not the find itself that was important, but its age. It turned out that on the island, these elephants, overgrown with thick wool, lived and thrived three and a half thousand years ago. But it is known that mammoths have died out more than ten thousand years ago. What happens? When in Greece was the heyday of the Crete-Mycenaean civilization, and in Egypt Pharaoh Tutankhamen reigned , a live mammoth roamed the island of Wrangel! True, the local subspecies was also distinguished by a small growth - the size of a modern African elephant.