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WONDERS OF NATURE
Wrangel Island. Nature miracle
Washed by the icy waters of the Chukchi and East Siberian seas, it is located in the harsh Arctic expanses, on the very border of the western and eastern hemispheres, the snow-covered Wrangel Island. However, "washed" is not an entirely accurate expression, because for almost ten months a year the island is surrounded by motionless, hummocked ice fields.
The existence of a huge land mass in the distant Arctic (and the island is 150 kilometers long and 75 kilometers wide) remained unknown to science until the beginning of the 1820th century. It was only in 1824-XNUMX that the Russian expedition of F. P. Wrangel first explored the northern coast of Chukotka in search of a hypothetical land located, according to then assumptions, to the north of the coast of the peninsula. Wrangel and his companions traveled on dog sleds almost the entire coast from the mouth of the Kolyma to the Kolyuchinskaya Bay and compiled the first map of this area. By the way, it depicted a large island with a mountain in the middle, and next to it was an inscription: "According to the stories of the Chukchi, the mountains are seen from Cape Yakan in the summer." Russian researchers tried to get to the unknown land on the ice. Their teams went north three times, each time moving 150-200 kilometers from the mainland, but again and again impassable heaps of ice hummocks or many kilometers of unfrozen polynyas got in the way. More than once, drifting ice fields parted, and travelers found themselves on a floating ice floe, cut off from the coast. Fortunately, the ice masses then converged again and the expedition managed to return safely to the mainland. The risk that the detachment was exposed to during these ice campaigns is indicated by an entry in the diary of Wrangel's companion, also a naval officer Fyodor Matyushkin (by the way, Pushkin's lyceum friend): "The Arctic Sea overthrew the shackles of winter; huge ice fields, rising almost perpendicularly on the ridges raging waves crashed and disappeared in the foaming abyss and then again appeared on the pitted surface of the sea, covered with silt and sand. It is impossible to imagine anything like this terrible destruction. Unfortunately, the authorities refused Wrangel the funds for a new expedition, and the discovery of the island took place only half a century later. It was made by the brave American Captain Long, after whom the strait that separates Wrangel Island from the mainland is now named. In 1867, Long, commanding the whaling ship Nile, approached the island for the first time and sailed along its entire southern coast. He named the land he discovered by Wrangel. And a decade and a half later, another American, Captain Hooper, on the ship "Corvina" moored to the shores of the island and set foot on its land. As for the detailed study of Wrangel Island, it began only 50 years later, in 1933, when Russian polar explorers, having spent the winter on the island, compiled its first detailed map and built a polar station in Rogers Bay, which exists to this day. Now the entire Wrangel Island has been declared a nature reserve. This easternmost of the Russian reserves is located in a natural area referred to by geographers as the Arctic desert. For a person who has never been to the Arctic, the nature of this region makes an indelible impression. For ten months - from September to June - winter reigns on the island. At the very height of it, from mid-November to January, the sun does not appear above the horizon here - the polar night sets in. The endless snowy plains of the island and the icy expanses of the surrounding seas merge into a continuous monotonous white desert, illuminated only by the light of the moon or the aurora. Auroras in this area are frequent and long lasting. Sometimes for several days in a row they drape the dome of the sky with curving folds of luminous panels or sheaves of multi-colored rays that constantly change their outlines. You can stand for hours and admire the whimsical curtains, flags, arches and diverging fans that shimmer with pink, crimson, orange, green or yellowish light, then unfolding, then closing in a leisurely and enchanting dance. At the beginning and at the end of winter, ferocious hurricanes hit the island when wind speeds reach 150 kilometers per hour. The falling snow is blown off the mountains and open spaces into the valleys, where monstrous snowdrifts are formed, sometimes up to 25 meters deep, that is, from an eight-story building! But on the other hand, in the short Arctic summer, the sun here does not set below the horizon at all. The polar day lasts for two months - from mid-May to mid-July, and at this time the island is transformed: streams and rivers murmur, on the coast, patches of mosses and lichens are full of bright white and green spots, and in some places even grasses and dwarf shrubs. It is rare to find plants more than ten centimeters high on the island. They seem to cling to the ground, escaping from the winds in frost. And no wonder: the average annual temperature here is minus eleven degrees, although on especially hot summer days in the inner valleys it sometimes reaches plus fifteen. At this time, on the site of the so-called mammoth prairie - the remnants of meadows that once existed in the north of Eurasia, where herds of woolly mammoths grazed, poppies bloom, lingonberries ripen, and next to the typically arctic sedge and bluegrass, green waves of wormwood and feather grass sway, reminiscent of their fragrant aroma about the Central Russian steppes. The rivers and lakes of Wrangel Island freeze to the bottom in winter, so there are no fish in them. Yes, and land animals stay close to the sea - the main source of food in this harsh land. On capes and sandy spits near the coast, walruses, the largest animals in the Arctic, arrange their rookeries. Old male walruses reach a length of four meters and weigh up to two tons. They plow the bottom with their tusks and eat mollusks that have surfaced with a cloud of stirred up silt. Every now and then on the rookery there are duels between males who did not divide the females. The number of these pinnipeds on the island is several tens of thousands, and watching the sea of \uXNUMXb\uXNUMXbshining backs and mustachioed fanged heads on a rookery is an unusually fascinating activity. "The beast, unseen on earth, and the appearance of the devil," - such an entry was made in the ship's log by an English captain, who first saw these animals in the XNUMXth century. In our opinion, the appearance of a walrus does not evoke such gloomy associations. His big-eyed mustachioed physiognomy is rather good-natured than ferocious. And the walrus moves on land with difficulty, hobbling and waddling from side to side. But God forbid you get too close to the old male or make him feel imminent danger with a sharp movement. In the blink of an eye, the beast is transformed. The bull's eyes fill with blood, the tusks rise menacingly, the whole body, previously relaxed, suddenly gathers into a tight springy lump of muscles, and a ferocious roar unequivocally warns: there will be no mercy for anyone! And indeed, there were cases when even a polar bear became a victim of a walrus in a rookery, which hunger forced to forget about caution. Brownish-brown carcasses of many animals lie close to each other on the beach without gaps. A mighty male emerging from the sea is sometimes forced to clear his living space, wielding powerful tusks. But now, after a small scuffle, the place was won back, the walrus lay down, the neighbors calmed down, and sleepy silence again reigns in the rookery. However, babies, unlike their parents, do not lie quietly. First one, then another walrus begins to make its way to the water, unceremoniously climbing right on the backs of adults. Sometimes a walrus, disturbed by a mischievous walrus, muttering something while awake, will slap him with a flipper, and the offended cub, grunting displeasedly, hurries to finally reach the sea and join peers crunching shells in shallow water. Walruses are at ease on Wrangel Island. Here they are not disturbed by hunters and not frightened by the curious, and there are enough shellfish on the sandbanks for everyone. Walruses, despite their formidable appearance and impressive size, are very sensitive to extraneous stimuli and, for example, on the coast of Chukotka or in the Kuriles, they often suffer from human-induced stress. The sound of a passing motorboat or a flying helicopter can sow panic in the herd. It happens that walruses completely leave their native bay, leaving the rookery forever. In Chukotka, there was a case when a pilot, who first came to the North, for the sake of curiosity, walked over a herd resting on the shore on a strafing flight. The noise of the engine and the sight of a huge rotary-winged machine flying right over their heads frightened the animals so much that they all rushed to the water, crushing several dozen relatives to death in a panic. Having come to their senses, the surviving walruses swam away to a new place, and the old haulout is still empty. Numerous herds of seals - ringed seals and sea hares - settle down on the ice fields near the coast. Their main occupation is fishing. Off the coast. And on the steep cliffs there are countless sea birds: guillemots, cormorants, kittiwakes, skuas, burgomasters and others. In total, up to two hundred thousand feathered inhabitants nest in the bird markets of Wrangel Island! In spring and autumn, on the southern coast of the island, you can meet the rarest bird in the Arctic - the pink gull covered with legends. This amazing bird flies to spend the winter not to the south, like all the others, but to the north, to the non-freezing polynyas of the polar seas, where it feeds on shoals of crustaceans and fish. The appearance of this seagull is so unusual, as if created by the brush of a science fiction artist. Its wings and body are an alternation of white and pink strokes, and around the neck there is a narrow dark agate strip. From its summer nesting in the mouths of the Yana and Kolyma, the pink gull flies north every autumn, and returns in the spring, stopping to rest on Wrangel Island. Here, on the island, there is the only colony of wild white geese in Russia, exterminated all over the world, except for Greenland and one or two islands of Canada. But the main attraction of the island reserve is, of course, the polar bear. These powerful predators of three meters in length, sometimes weighing 700 kilograms, are not afraid of either frost or cold water of the Arctic seas - thick wool and a thick layer of fat reliably protect them from all the vagaries of the weather. Usually they stay on floating ice, where they hunt seals, but from September to November, she-bears from all surrounding areas converge on Wrangel Island and make dens here. In deep snowdrifts on the slopes of the mountains, in winter, up to two hundred bear dwellings can be counted, which is why the island is sometimes called the "bear maternity hospital of the Arctic." In April, mothers with young offspring get out and begin to acquaint the kids with the surroundings. There are especially many lairs in the north-west of Wrangel Island in the Drem-Hed mountains. Since 1975, twenty musk oxen have been brought to the island by plane from the United States. Once these animals, together with mammoths, grazed here on the expanses of the northern prairies, but then they died out, probably not without human help. Musk oxen also disappeared in other habitats - in Alaska and Canada. Only in the deserted Northern Greenland have several hundred of these "living fossils" survived. Canadian and American zoologists have managed to resettle musk oxen to the north of their mainland, and now it is the turn of Eurasia. I must say that the island liked the musk bulls (such is their other name). Over the past twenty years, their herd has tripled, and every year new cubs appear. The musk ox has no natural enemies on the island, and the protected regime also protects them from hunters, so it will soon be possible to try to relocate part of the growing livestock to the New Siberian Islands or Chukotka, where, however, a more difficult life awaits them due to possible attacks by wolves. However, as observations have shown in Taimyr, where musk oxen were also brought, herds of polar strong men skillfully defend themselves from predators. At the sight of a threat, old bulls stand in a ring, putting their horns out and hiding behind their backs females with calves. So they can stand for a day or three, until the wolves get tired of senseless attempts to attack. Reindeer also appeared on the island recently. In 1947, the next change of winterers brought with them a small herd of deer, hoping to use ungulates as a vehicle. But part of the deer fled and ran wild, giving rise to a population of a kind of "northern mustangs." And since the main regulator of their numbers - the polar wolf - is absent on Wrangel Island, feral deer have bred and are now found throughout the island. In autumn, signs of life almost disappear along the coast. Bears lie in dens, musk oxen and deer go to deep valleys, and birds fly away. Only crows and snowy owls risk staying here for the winter. The raven spins around two small villages where polar explorers live, and the owl feeds on numerous mouse-like rodents here - lemmings. These small animals with variegated hair follow a strict daily routine all year round: they feed for an hour, and then sleep for two hours. In winter, they get their food from under the snow and even manage to bear offspring in these conditions. Their number is constantly changing and every four or five years, if the summer turned out to be warm and fruitful for berries and mushrooms, it can grow almost three times. Then a huge mass of animals begins to migrate, and millions of lemmings move in a living moving river to the seashore, where they throw themselves into the water and swim until they drown. The reason for this strange behavior has not yet been unraveled by scientists, but animals, birds and even fish are expanse in such years. Owls and gulls, crows and arctic foxes, and even polar bears switch to a “mouse diet” at this time, and then the number of predators increases many times over. But the anomalous year passes, the number of lemmings is reduced, and life on the island returns to its former course. And again, over the desert worlds and coastal plains of Wrangel Island, a snowy owl makes a silent flight, looking for the desired prey that has become rare. By the way, the mountains of the island are quite inaccessible. From sea to sea stretch along it from west to east three gloomy ridges of black steep cliffs, covered on the slopes with a scattering of brown boulders and rubble and reaching a thousand meters in height. The rivers flowing between the ridges foam with rapids and waterfalls. The valley of the largest of them - the Vodopadnaya River - is a favorite habitat for musk oxen. The short Arctic summer passes quickly. The hills and coastal capes are covered with a snow blanket. The hubbub of bird markets subsides, and again silence envelops the island - the island of polar bears and pink gulls, hairy musk oxen and fanged walruses, the island of polar lights on the one hundred and eightieth meridian - the amazing, harsh and beautiful Wrangel Island. Author: B.Wagner
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