Wrangel Island (redirected from Wrangell Island, Russia)

Wrangel Island or Wrangell Island (răng`gəl), Rus. Ostrov Vrangelya, island, 1,740 sq mi (4,507 sq km), in the Arctic Ocean, between the East Siberian Sea and the Chukchi Sea, off NE Russia. It is separated from the mainland by Long Strait. Generally barren, frozen, and rocky, it has an arctic station and a permanent settlement. The island is a breeding ground for polar bears, polar foxes, seals, and lemmings. During the summer it is visited by numerous varieties of birds. The island was sought by Russian Baron Ferdinand von Wrangel during his arctic expedition of 1820–24; he had heard of it from Siberian natives, but he did not succeed in finding it. It was finally discovered by Thomas Long, captain of an American whaling ship, who named it for Wrangel. Later George W. De Long, an American explorer, discovered that it was a small island and not a part of the mainland, as at first believed. In 1911 a group of Russians made a landing on the island, and in 1921 Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the Canadian explorer, sent a small party to Wrangel with a view to claiming it for Great Britain. In 1926 the Soviet government established the first permanent colony there, ousting the few of Stefansson's Eskimo settlers who had remained. The Soviet freighter Chelyuskin, trying to discover (1933) whether an ordinary cargo ship could navigate the Northeast Passage, was crushed in the ice off Wrangel Island. The party was marooned on the island but was later rescued.

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Wrangel Island

Island, northeastern Russia. Located in the Arctic Ocean, it is crossed by the 180th meridian. It has an area of some 2,800 sq mi (7,300 sq km). Although it reaches an altitude of 3,596 ft (1,096 m) at Sovetskaya Mountain, there are no glaciers. The Russian explorer Ferdinand P. Wrangel, for whom the island was later named, determined its location from accounts of Siberian natives but did not land there during his mapping of the Siberian coast in the early 1820s. Russian fur traders subsequently visited the island, and it was sighted by U.S. vessels in 1867 and 1881. Survivors of a sunken Canadian ship reached Wrangel in 1914, and the leader of the expedition created an international incident in the early 1920s when he claimed Wrangel for Canada without authorization. The Soviet Union then annexed the island, and permanent occupation began in 1926. Wrangel Island State Reserve, established in 1976, occupies 1,730,000 ac (700,000 ha). The reserve was designated a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2004.

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Wrangel Island

an island in the Arctic Ocean, off the coast of the extreme NE of Russia: administratively part of Russia; mountainous and mostly tundra. Area: about 7300 sq. km (2800 sq. miles)