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Russia’s Wrangel Island couldn’t be colder or more remote – a nature reserve on the 180th meridian that requires government permits to visit and a helicopter or icebreaker to reach. But that splendid isolation, writes Hampton Sides in the May issue of National Geographic magazine, “has led to an astonishing abundance of life”, past and present. Paleontologists say it’s the last place where woolly mammoths lived. Today it’s home to snowy owls, muskoxen, arctic foxes (like this pup playing with a lemming carcass), reindeers, and the largest population of Pacific walruses. It also serves as the world’s biggest denning ground for polar bears. This photo gallery of its current residents merely flicks at the island’s biodiversity. (Photo by Sergey Gorshkov/National Geographic)
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