 Wrangel Island has the largest population of denning polar bears |
 Baron Ferdinand Petrovich von Wrangel (right)
Located some five hundred kilometres north of the Arctic Circle in the icy Chukchi Sea is the forlorn landmass of Wrangel Island. So remote and isolated is this frozen land that it was not properly mapped until the early 20th Century, and then inadvertently, when wildly over-optimistic explorers washed up, shipwrecked, on its shores.
After a couple of abortive attempts at settlement and protracted diplomatic argument, Wrangel Island is now occupied by a small team of Russian scientists and their supporting community who maintain a meteorological and research base at Ushakovskoye on the Southern coast. The little village confirms Russia’s on-going territorial claim - one that wasn’t properly resolved until 1974.
Named after Baron Ferdinand Petrovich Wrangel in 1867 by American whaler and de-facto explorer, Thomas Long, as a tribute to the Baron who spent three years searching for the island but came out empty-handed. Long conveniently overlooked the fact that British Admiralty charts already referred to the island as Kellett Land after the Irish-born captain who first charted it in 1849.
Where is Wrangel Island? See it on Google Maps
[ See Images]
|
