Which island is called the maternity hospital of polar bears. "Wrangel Island": maternity hospital for polar bears (Russia)
(for students in grades 8 - 9) is carried out to control knowledge on this topic, as well as to prepare for. The quiz contains answers that can be used by the student to self-test their knowledge.
1 .What is called the Arctic?
(the zero degree isotherm is the border of the Arctic)
4.What is the area of the Arctic?
(the area of the entire Arctic is 21 million sq. km.)
5. What is the area of the Russian Arctic?
(Mountains Byrranga on the Taimyr Peninsula, height 1146 meters)
8. Name the most high point Arctic c.
18. How big is the Arctic?
(approaching 9000 cubic km)
19. How thick is the ice in the Arctic?
(up to 5 meters in winter)
20. What is the area of the entire Arctic glaciation?
(32508 sq. Km.)
21. What is the area of the Arctic in Russia?
(8000 sq. Km.)
22. What rivers are located in the Arctic?
(Eric Raudi)
27. Who and when first reached the Spitsbergen Islands?
(Nansen on "Fram")
28. By whom and when is the passage between and?
(G.Ya.Sedov, "Saint Phoca", 1912 - 1914)
30. Who was the first to visit the North Pole?
(Peary, 1908 - 1909)
31. List the names of Russian ships that traveled in the Arctic.
("St. Fock", "Sibiryakov", "Chelyuskin", "Georgy Sedov")
32. What expedition, when, under whose leadership laid the sea route?
(1932, icebreaker "Sibiryakov", O.Yu. Schmidt)
33. When was the first Arctic expedition organized, who was its leader?
(1937, North Pole 1, D.I. Papanin)
34. How many scientific stations in Russia operate in the Arctic?
(there were 34 stations in 2005))
35. Which states are located in the Arctic?
36. What is the most important sea route in the Arctic?
(Northern Sea Route)
38. Name the most important legal document on the Arctic.
(Declaration on the Conservation of the Arctic)
39. What does the word Arctic mean?
(Arktos means bear. The Arctic is the territory lying under the constellation of the Bear)
40. Which island in the Arctic is called the cradle of polar bears?
Between and
“Everyone who is lucky enough to visit and work on it will love and remember this“ Unknown Land ”for the rest of his life. (A.I. Mineev)
The main policy of the reserve is non-interference with natural processes. We proceed from the fact that this territory belongs to Nature, people only observe the ongoing processes. Over the years of its existence, the infrastructure of the reserve has merged with the landscape of the island. Bears often wander around the houses, in winter musk oxen come to the village. Arctic foxes hunt lemmings near houses, while snowy owls use buildings as broods. Wolverines play near the cordons. During spring migration, white geese often rest after a long flight near the village.
MAIN "MATERNITY HOSE"
The Chukchi name of Wrangel Island is Umkylir, which means Bear Island. And indeed it is. The Arctic is impossible to imagine without a polar bear. It is the largest of the land-based predators. The white giant (up to 700 kg) surpasses its land relatives in mass. Every year, starting at the end of July, many bears come to the shores of Wrangel Island. Their existence depends on the presence of walruses and seals, the nature of the ice cover. Wrangel Island is also called the "maternity hospital" of polar bears. The maximum density for the entire Arctic in the distribution of ancestral dens was recorded on the Herald Island.
Counting polar bears throughout the Arctic is a complex undertaking that requires the constant combined efforts of scientists and practitioners from all polar countries. The total number of polar bears is estimated at about 22 thousand individuals. The Chukchi-Alaskan population numbers about 2000 individuals. However, these figures are approximate. Just two decades of intense polar bear hunting has put it on the brink of extinction. In Russia, any hunt for polar bears has been banned since 1956, and poaching carries a criminal offense. This rare species is included in the "Red Book".
International Union for Conservation of Nature and natural resources(IUCN) and the Red Book of Russia. Sometimes there are cubs that the mother-bear lost or she was killed by poachers. Sometimes young female bears lose their cubs, especially if there are several cubs in the litter, when chasing them by humans. This is not always associated with a desire to hunt a bear, often people want to photograph them at a short distance. So in 2010, with the participation of the reserve staff, a bear cub found near the island of Ayon was transferred to the Moscow Zoo. They called him Aion. His mother was never found.
At present, the conservation of the polar bear population and its study is one of the priority tasks of the reserve. It is being successfully solved by Nikita Ovsyanikov, the leading researcher of the reserve, Candidate of Biological Sciences. Despite lengthy controversy, polar bear hunting was never permitted. We think this is a great achievement. Natural conditions are changing too quickly at the present time, there is not enough data to be sure that hunting a small number of bears will not affect the population. It is necessary to conduct large-scale research using the most modern achievements of genetics, tagging using satellite tracking sensors. The reserve has accumulated a lot of experience in polar bear research, but, unfortunately, there are often not enough funds to carry out such research.
V modern world the well-being of polar bears is threatened by poaching, global warming, and pollution of the Arctic. In recent years, one of the main factors affecting the state of the population has become the absence of ice in late summer and autumn. Animals are forced to go on land, starve for a long time. This leads to problematic meetings with people in the villages along the coast. In the reserve, animals also come to the village where its employees live, however, thanks to the vast accumulated experience of communicating with these predators, problems do not arise. Scientists of the reserve in their lectures and consultations share their experience in preventing problem encounters with polar bears.
WHAT IS STILL RICH
The avifauna is rich in the reserve - more than 169 species of birds, of which 62 species nest on the island. Every year from North America white geese arrive on Wrangel Island. The creation of the Wrangel Island nature reserve was closely related to the need to protect the unique nesting sites of white geese in Asia. In the middle of the last century, Wrangel Island became the only place of existence of a colony of this species in the Old World. The uniqueness of the Wrangel population of white geese is primarily due to the fact that here, on the territory of one colony, geese nest side by side, arriving from two geographically separated wintering grounds.
The annual monitoring of the Wrangel population of white geese was started by E.V. Syroechkovsky in 1969 and has been conducted by the staff of the reserve for 40 (!) Years. For the duration and intensity of observations in one population, these studies are exceptional.
The largest seabird colonies in the Chukchi Sea are located on Wrangel Island. The rare black geese are very interesting. Here you can also see the Fork-tailed Gull and Yellow-toed Sandpiper, and in the fall, if you are lucky, you can admire the rarest, mysterious and beautiful creatures of the Arctic - Rosy Gulls off the coast of the island.
The musk ox, or musk ox, is a hoofed animal. "Umingmak" ("bearded") is the name given by the Eskimos of the Nunivak island to the musk ox, which was moved to Wrangel Island in 1975. And he took root remarkably, now the scientists of the reserve have more than 800 individuals. From the very beginning, Wrangel Island was considered as a natural reserve for the creation of a full-fledged donor population of musk oxen. In the future, it was planned to relocate the musk oxen to the northeastern territories (Chukotka, Eastern Yakutia) to create a full-fledged resource species in these places.
The reserve has developed a method of ground-based capture of musk oxen, and since 2002, catches have been periodically carried out for settling in Yakutia. Currently, the issue of approving a regional program for creating free-living populations of musk oxen in Chukotka is being considered.
Reindeer have been living on the island since 1948, when a reindeer herding state farm was organized in the village of Ushakovskoye. With their appearance, the composition of the island's fauna was enriched - through the Long Strait, which separates the island from the mainland, came the wolverine and the wolf.
After the closure of the branch of the state farm, the deer began to run wild and acquired a wild color. Their behavior also began to change. In recent years, the island's reindeer population has declined dramatically. This is due to ice conditions in winter. So in the winter of 2005, more than 6,000 deer died on the island.
Arctic fox is a permanent inhabitant of Wrangel Island. In winter, the Arctic fox is handsome, it resembles a fluffy ball of wool. The reserve has the highest density of polar fox burrows.
The subspecies of Siberian lemming and Vinogradov's hoofed lemming, living on Wrangel Island, are endemic. Once every three years, there is a mass breeding of lemmings, and then many skuas, snowy owls, and Arctic foxes appear on the island. In "lemming years" the tundra becomes empty.
In late July - early August, thousands of Pacific walruses come to Wrangel Island, migrating north after wintering in the Bering Strait. Gray whales appear off the coast of the island every summer. In autumn, herds of belugas pass by the shores of the island.
The flora of Wrangel Island is one of the richest in the Arctic. There are more than four hundred plant species on the island, some of which are endemic. The world of higher plants has more than 480 species. Three of them, named by scientists after Wrangel, grow only here, these are poppy, cinquefoil and bluegrass.
The island's entomofauna has not yet been fully studied. Each time entomologist Olga Khruleva, during the processing of scientific collections, finds new species for the island, and sometimes for science.
FOR A CLEAN ARCTIC
In 2010, the reserve announced the "Clean Island" campaign, the purpose of which is to cleanse the reserve from anthropogenic pollution left over from the time when a branch of a reindeer-breeding state farm, the village of Ushakovskoye and military bases functioned on Wrangel Island. Clearing the territory of the reserve from technogenic debris was one of the conditions for the inclusion of Wrangel Island in the List of World Sites in 2004. natural heritage UNESCO.
In February of this year, on the initiative of the administration of the Federal State Institution "Reserve" Wrangel Island "by the Minister of Natural Resources of the Russian Federation Yu.P. The Trutnevs were instructed to prepare a Project for cleaning up the territory of the reserve. In the summer of 2011, work began on Wrangel Island to clean up the coastal strip from scrap metal as part of the implementation of the decree of the Chairman of the Government of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin on cleaning up the Arctic.
In August 2011, the ship "Mikhail Somov" approached the island and delivered the equipment. The staff of the reserve and the specialists who arrived on the ship took an active part in the work to clean up the territory of the reserve.
Scrap metal on the territory of the reserve is concentrated in several places. The main part is in the village of Ushakovskoye, the Somnitelnaya station and on Cape Hawaii. As part of the preparation for the removal of scrap metal, the staff of the reserve in the summer current year collected about 1000 barrels scattered throughout the reserve and stored them for further disposal. In just four days of work, 8.5 tons of barrels were prepared for removal and loaded onto the ship. Of course, this is not enough, but the first, main step has been taken - equipment and tools have been delivered.
The reserve staff will continue to work on preparing scrap metal for removal for further disposal during the year.
Wrangel Island is called the "Pearl of the Arctic". We are confident that the CLEAN territory of the reserve will create more favorable conditions for the life of animals and attract tourists. Wrangel Island is waiting for its guests. Those who understand the vulnerability of the Arctic nature and will be very careful about it.
The polar bear is the largest animal not only among bears, but among all predators. There are huge males, the body length of which reaches 280 cm, the height at the withers is 150 cm, and the weight is 800 kg; females are smaller and lighter.
The species is listed in the IUCN Red List and the Russian Red Book. Limited hunting is allowed on it only for the indigenous population of the North.
Polar bears live in the polar regions in the northern hemisphere of the Earth. Distributed to the north - up to 88 ° N. sh., to the south - to Newfoundland, on the mainland - in the Arctic desert zone to the tundra zone.
Polar bears are associated with drifting and fast ice all year round sea ice... They come ashore rarely and for a short time. It happens that together with floating ice polar bears reach the shores of Iceland, even in the Sea of Okhotsk and Japan. However, such animals always strive to return to their usual ice conditions, for this they make long transitions by land, moving strictly to the north. 
In the harsh conditions of the Arctic, there is no usual alternation of day and night. There is also no pronounced daily activity in the animals inhabiting it. However, not all polar bears go into hibernation, which is widely known for brown bears. Winter sleep is typical only for female bears who are going to become mothers, and for elderly males, thus waiting out the most difficult time of the year. Strong, healthy males and non-pregnant females are usually active all year round, sitting in dens freshly dug in the snow only during a strong blizzard 
The polar bear, unlike its omnivorous relatives, is a predator that actively preys on large animals. Its main prey is Arctic seals, ringed seal, sea hare. Sometimes the bear hunts young animals of large marine mammals - walruses, belugas and narwhals. When the sea casts a whale's carcass ashore, several predators gather at the carcass at once.
While on land, bears feed on bird eggs, lemmings. In addition, in the summer on the mainland and islands, they eat cloudberries, in the intertidal zone - algae such as kelp and fucus. After leaving the den, the she-bears dig up the snow and eat willow shoots and sedge leaves. 
Polar bears mate in spring or summer. Up to 3 and even up to 7 males gather around the female. The mating couple stays together for a short time, only for a while while the female is in estrus, and this is only 3 days.
The polar bear migrates widely from the shores of the Arctic Ocean all the way to the Pole. But in the fall, pregnant females go out onto the land of the islands or mainland where they arrange a den. Long before hibernating, the bear manages to work up enough fat for herself, which she spends all winter.
Pregnant females lie in dens for winter sleep for up to six months, and childbirth takes place here in the midst of a fierce winter. Usually 1-3 teddy bears appear. They are born blind, naked and deaf, weighing about 500-750 g. Polar bear milk is very fatty and nutritious. The cubs begin to see clearly in a month, in the second month (with a weight of 10 kg) their teeth erupt, by which time the cubs begin to leave the den. The mother gradually accustom them to cold, wind and light. And after a month or two, the family finally leaves the den and goes to the ice.
The bear cubs do not part with the bear for a year and a half. The female jealously guards her offspring, in particular from males, which are very dangerous for cubs.
Females reach sexual maturity at 4 years old, males later 
Polar bears do not adhere to specific individual areas. Adult animals usually roam one by one. Having gotten a seal and satiated, the predator sleeps right there, at the place of a successful hunt, and, waking up, wanders on 
In the vastness of the icy desert, it is difficult for such a whopper to remain unnoticed for prey. The clubfoot is helped out by his camouflage coat. Frozen in place, the bear merges with the surrounding landscape. The seal will not know why the snowdrift suddenly rose and hit him with a paw. 
Why is the bear white? If you look at it, then this bear should not be called white, but colorless. The pigment, which is responsible for the color of the coat, is absent. It is interesting to see a single hair under magnification. It turns out that it resembles a thin hollow tube. The inside of the tube is uneven. This crushes the light and bounces it off at different angles, giving it the appearance of white.
But polar bear does not always appear as such a colorless person. In summer, under the influence of the active sun, its coat acquires a yellow tint. There are also polar bears with green leaves. You can see such specimens, as a rule, in unusual for them climatic zones... For example, in zoos in tropical countries. Bears turn green because microscopic algae grow in their hollow hairs. 
So, we found out that a polar bear can be white, yellow, and even green. But no matter what color his fur is, if you push it apart, we will find a dark, almost black animal! As dark as the tip of a bear's nose. This skin color contributes to the least heat transfer, which is important in the harsh polar climate. Well, Mother Nature has just endowed the polar bear with amazing covers! Thanks to them, he will not freeze, and will be able to feed himself.
Threats to the mind:
For polar bears, the main natural limiting factor is the abundance and availability of seals. Low breeding rates and relatively high mortality among cubs also constrain population growth. Trichinosis, widespread among polar bears, apparently also causes some damage to the population. Long-term changes in numbers are apparently associated with cooling and warming of the climate in the Arctic. Among anthropogenic factors, illegal shooting (it has become especially widespread in Chukotka), pollution of the habitat, and a factor of concern have a negative impact on the population. A decrease in the number of seals can occur not only due to the influence of natural factors, but also due to human fault. 
A polar bear can live in captivity for more than 30 years, less in nature.
In the Chukchi Sea, on the Wrangel and Herald islands, there is the Wrangel Island nature reserve, which is considered the most northern Far East... The area of the protected area is more than two million hectares, while almost half of the area is occupied by the sea area.
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The northern reserve "Wrangel Island" is famous for the fact that many polar bears bring their offspring here, and there is also a population of the white goose, which is considered the only one in Russia.
I would like to note that there are many different animals in the reserve, but the climate of the islands is especially attractive for polar bears, which have a relatively narrow habitat, and females choose small undeveloped islands to give birth to their babies. Not surprisingly, many people call the territory of the Wrangel Island reserve a maternity hospital for polar bears.
On average, about half a thousand pregnant polar bears swim to these places annually, while their dens can be located almost nearby. Best place for a bear rookery, these are mountain slopes located near the sea coast. Most often, she-bears dig dens in the snow, and in the case when the snow cover is small, the rookery is built in some kind of depression. Further snowfalls will complete the den, erect a snow ceiling and walls.
The she-bear makes a ventilation hole in the ceiling of her oval-shaped snow den to regulate the temperature and humidity of the air. The exit from the rookery is located at the bottom, which also allows maintaining the optimum temperature. Even in thirty-degree frosts in such a "house" it will be up to seven degrees Celsius.
The Wrangel Island reserve plays a huge role in maintaining the population of polar bears, largely thanks to it, since the mid-eighties of the last century, there has been a positive dynamics of growth of these rare animals.
The Russian island of Wrangel is located between the Chukotka and By the East Siberian Sea in the Arctic Ocean. This rugged island was named after the Russian navigator F.P. Wrangel. Heavy snowfalls and frosts occur here even in summer, and the air temperature hardly rises above +2 degrees Celsius, while in winter it stays below - 30. Also, three months a year, polar night sets in on Wrangel Island. However, with all this, the island is under the protection of UNESCO as nature reserve together with the neighboring Herald Island and coastal waters.
History of Wrangel Island
The finds made in this area by archaeologists indicate that the first people lived and hunted on Wrangel Island as early as 1,750 BC. Russian pioneers suspected the existence of this object already in the middle of the 17th century from the stories of the inhabitants of Chukotka, although geographic Maps the island was only laid down two centuries later. The development of the island began in the middle of the last century, when in 1926 a polar station was created here under the leadership of G.A. Ushakov, and two years later the icebreaker "Litke" made an expedition to Wrangel Island. Later, domesticated reindeer were brought to the island to organize a reindeer herding state farm, which in the sixties grew into a reserve of republican significance.
In the mid-nineties of the last century, an employee of the reserve suddenly discovered on the island the remains of woolly mammoths, whose age, according to preliminary estimates, was about 7 - 3, 5 thousand years, whereas earlier it was believed that mammoths became extinct 10 - 12 thousand years ago. Later it was possible to establish that the found remains belonged to a rather small subspecies that inhabited the island in that historical period when they had already been built. Pyramids of Egypt... This fact made Wrangel Island one of the most important paleontological monuments on the planet.
The harsh nature of the island
The area of Wrangel Island is today 7,670 square kilometers and more than half of them are covered with snow. Mountain peaks located in the central part of the island. It is not surprising that the climate in this part of the world is very harsh. For most of the year, the island is dominated by cold arctic air, while in the summer months, masses of wetter and warmer air from the Pacific Ocean and sometimes from Siberia reach Wrangel Island. The coldest months here are February and March, when, in addition to stable frosty weather, the situation is complicated by blizzards, as well as strong north winds speed up to 40 meters per second. It happens on Wrangel Island and summer, but its own, arctic, which means it is very cold with snowfalls and frosts. The air temperature in the hottest month, July, reaches + 3 degrees Celsius. Sometimes natural anomalies also occur here, as, for example, in 2007, when the summer was especially warm with a temperature of + 7 degrees.
In winter, under the thickness of ice and snow, Wrangel Island seems completely frozen and completely lifeless. However, as soon as the sun begins to warm up slightly, a miracle occurs and the first flowers appear on the hills. In just a few warm spring days, literally the entire island is covered with bright poppies and forget-me-nots. In the center of Wrangel Island, where the icy breath of the ocean almost does not reach, the vegetation is even more abundant. Here you can see not only flowers and grass, but even small trees - shrubby willows, which spread on the ground or rise 50-60 centimeters. In total, on Wrangel Island, experts count about two hundred species of plants, 114 of which were recognized as rare and very rare.
As for the fauna of Wrangel Island, in general it is not rich and cannot boast of a variety of species due to the harsh climatic conditions. About 20 species of birds nest here, including the most popular local birds - the white geese. They form the main colony and several smaller ones in the valley of the Tundrovaya River in the central part of the island. There are also brent geese, Arctic terns, crows, and skuas. Sometimes birds from North America also fly to the island - Canadian geese and cranes. The fauna of mammals in this northern reserve is not particularly rich. Lemmings can be called permanent inhabitants, while wolves, foxes, ermines and wolverines are much less common. Together with the polar explorers, the house mouse came to the island, which lives only in warm living quarters. Also on Wrangel Island is the country's largest walrus rookery, and in coastal waters there are seals.
Maternity hospital and nursery for bears
Despite the fact that the harsh Wrangel Island does not boast a variety of animal species, it is often called a maternity hospital for bears. In fact, this is not only a maternity hospital, but also a real nursery for little bears, where babies study with curiosity new world and develop the skills needed to live independently. It is important that at these moments no one bothers the bears from raising and training their offspring.
In the middle of the last century, the number of polar bears on Wrangel Island fell sharply due to the fact that the previously deserted Arctic began to suddenly develop and be mastered by people. The participants of numerous expeditions were so amazed by the huge number of bears that they began to kill them not for food, but for the sake of beautiful warm skins or simply out of sports interest and excitement. Thus, in just a few years, the living emblem of this region was on the verge of extinction, which could not but cause alarm.
The first step in the conservation of polar bears on Wrangel Island was the ban on hunting and the inclusion of these endangered animals in the Red Book. Such a measure immediately gave excellent results, and the number of animals stopped decreasing. However, in order to save the remaining representatives of the species, this was clearly not enough. It was required to provide animals with the necessary conditions for life and raising offspring. Then it became obvious that not only hunters, but in general people should not disturb polar bears in the places of their breeding and raising babies. So Wrangel Island became the main maternity hospital for polar bears, where nothing disturbs the peace of expectant mothers. In the area of bear dens, not only all types of activities, but also the stay of people in general are strictly prohibited. Special exceptions are sometimes made for scientists studying the life of these animals.
Every year, about half a thousand pregnant polar bears come here, whose maternity dens can be located very close to each other. The best rookeries are the mountain slopes in the immediate vicinity of the coast. Usually she-bears dig their dens right in the snow, and if the snow cover is not thick and dense enough, then the rookery is built in some kind of depression. When the main part of the hole is dug, it is "completed" by snowfalls, erecting walls and a ceiling of snow. In the ceiling of this snow den, bears make holes for air to enter, and the exit is usually located at the bottom, which allows you to maintain the required temperature inside the dwelling - even in the most severe frosts, the temperature in the den keeps around + 7 degrees Celsius.
As soon as the little cubs are able to move independently, the family gets out of their den. In the following days, the bear does not move far from the children, feeding on what she gets from under the snow - mosses, lichens, last year's grass. The rest of the time, polar bears devote to their babies, teaching them to dig moss, climb icy hills, etc. In the first days, bear families return to their dens for the night, and then the she-bear with the cubs leaves the warm home for all the rest of the time to hunt among the endless snow fields of Wrangel Island, sometimes hiding in deep snowdrifts. However, the maternity dens do not remain empty - in the fall, other female bears make their place in them, and in the spring they again leave them with their offspring.
Visiting Wrangel Island
Once upon a time, the Chukchi lived on the territory of the current reserve on Wrangel Island, and to this day, the remains of the houses of the indigenous people have been preserved here. However, now no one is allowed on the island except scientists. Only as an exception, a few tourist groups can get permission to walk along the coast of the island. Getting to the island on your own is almost impossible at any time of the year. In the summer you can try to get here by going to a multi-day sea cruise from the city of Anadyr. The cost of such a trip is extremely high - a 15-day tour of Chukotka with a call to Wrangel Island on an icebreaker will cost from 9,800 to 13,000 US dollars (about 402,290 - 533,651 rubles) per person. Previously, it was possible to inspect the island from a helicopter, but recently it was forbidden to fly over the reserve at a low altitude for everyone, except for scientists observing the animals.