New nature reserve to protect Great Siberian Ice Hole and mammoth bones

The famous Great Siberian Ice Hole is a rare location in the New Siberian Islands where unusual conditions mean the water never freezes in winter. More than 8 million hectares is earmarked to become a new nature reserve on the De Long and Anzhu islands.

It is intended that the new nature reserve development - approved by the republican authorities in Yakutia but still requiring Moscow's sign-off - will provide protection from illegal hunters seeking to collect extinct woolly mammoth bones on these remote Arctic islands. 

The islands are the world's largest deposit of mammoth bones, and currently they are actively extracted in violation of environmental regulations. The Great Siberian Ice Hole is a haven to an array of animals - many from the Red Book - to take advantage of its ice-free state. 

Among them: the Laptev subspecies of walrus, spectacled eider, seagull, and Bewick's swan.

Here too are polar bears, one of the world's least studied populations. 

The strip of open water in the Laptev Sea resembles a river, although it isn't. On the outer edge of the fast ice is Bolshoy Begichev Island in the Laptev Sea and the Medvezyi Islands in the East Siberian Sea.

In summer the surface is completely open, and in winter there usually young ice, but is never a hard cover. 

The key to this unusual phenomenon are southern winds which prevent the thick ice from developing, according to scientists. The Ice Hole was first discovered in the early 19th century. 

In 1811 it was observed by Lieutenant Tatarinov some 25 versts (1.07 km) from the island of New Siberia and by hunter Yakov Sannikov some 30 versts to the north from Cape Blagoveshchensky. The first full description appeared in 1824 following explorations by Peter Anjou (Anzhu) and Ferdinand Wrangel in the previous three years. 

Mammoth tusk and bone hunting in this area is a growing industry. 

Collecting from the ground is legal but poachers often use water pumps to denigrate the permafrost, worsening coastal erosion which is already in retreat by some 20 metres a year.

Mikhail Stishov, of WWF-Russia Arctic, said: 'Looking for bone, poachers are destroying the soil cover, vegetation and the whole terrestrial ecosystem, which may never recover. 

'Nature in the Arctic is extremely fragile. Because of the low temperatures, all processes are slowed down, and it takes very long to recover. 

'In addition, the bone hunters are 'thrown' on the islands by helicopters, with small products supply, when the food runs out, they go to hunt, and certainly do not understand which  is a rare animal and which is not.'