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In the blue light source of the Russian Arctic , scientists seize a rarefied exposure of a pivotal bear approaching a musk wild ox carcass Thursday ( March 27 ) .
Joel Berger , a aged scientist with the Wildlife Conservation Society and chairperson of wildlife biology at the University of Montana , posted the picture onTwitterfrom eastern Russia ’s distant Wrangel Island .
A polar bear photographed on Russia’s remote Wrangel Island.
Located 300 miles ( 483 kilometer ) north of the Arctic Circle , Wrangel Island brag the gamey biodiversity in the Arctic , including the biggest population of Pacific walruses and the great denseness of polar bear dens . But this isolated rocky harbor is perhaps most famous for its out inhabitants . While mostwoolly mammothsdied out in Siberia about 10,000 years ago , midget mammoths survived in Wrangel Island until 3,700 years ago . ( At that prison term , theGreat Pyramidof Giza had already been built in Egypt and Hammurabi ’s Code had been etched into endocarp in Babylon . )
Berger is currently on Wrangel Island with a squad of Russian scientists as part of an expedition to canvas how musk cattle living in this remote refuge compare with those in the thaw Alaskan Arctic , Scott Smith , a spokesman for the WCS , told Live Science in an email .
Musk oxen today are only aboriginal to Canada and Greenland , but they were once more far-flung across the Arctic . Twentymusk oxenwere introduced to Wrangel Island in 1975 . Today , their population has stabilize at around 900 individuals , according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ’s 2013 Arctic Report Card .
Conservationists have also lay down populations of musk oxen in Alaska , where the species disappear by the 1890s . Now , more than 4,200 musk oxen survive in five different Alaskan regions , though not all of those population are growing , NOAA official say .
" Several factors , include predation by grey-headed bear , hunting , access to wintertime habitats , winters with freeze rain or abstruse snow , nutritional deficiencies and disease may be affecting enlisting , selection and statistical distribution , " the Arctic Report Card read . " Entire group of 30 - 50 animals have died during spring floods , storm surges and lake ice break - up . "
