A man who has studied the wildlife of Russia’s Wrangel Island Nature Reserve for 29 summers is to share his love of the land and its creatures next week during White Rock & Surrey Naturalists’ general meeting.
Russian biologist Vasiliy Baranyuk will be at Sunnyside Hall, 1845 154 St., Feb. 10. The meeting gets underway at 7:30 p.m.
Baranyuk, also a photographer, specializes in the study of Wrangel Island’s unique population of snow geese. The waterfowl nest in an interior mountain valley and the pre-flight goslings walk 120 miles from their nests to the sea.
Wrangel Island – designated a World Heritage site in 2004 – is 2,900 square-miles of Arctic wilderness, with the highest density of polar bears and twice as many plants as any other areas of Arctic tundra.
The event will include video and photographs from his studies.
Everyone is welcome.