The Wrangel Island World Heritage Site Refugium

According to Gualtieri, L,. Vartanyan, S., et al. (2005)  neither Wrangel Island nor the East Siberianor Chukchi Seas experienced extensive glaciation over the last 64, 000 years.....



Wrangel Island was once a part of Beringia

 Further, Geomorphological reconstruction indicates that Wrangel Island formed Beringia with Chukotka, Alaska and surrounding shelf during the Late Pleistocene, when the global sea level was ca. 100 m below present sea level. Around the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, due to sea level rise, Wrangel Island was separated from the continent  

(becoming a refugium for dwarf woolly mammoth population that became  the last surviving group. S. L. Vartanyan (1995)  and S. L. Vartanyan, (1993)
 

Smaller dwarf mammoth (front)  Wrangel Island

Wrangel and Herald Islands also boast an amazing diversity of flora, insects and birds, representing the greatest refugium of Pleistocene elements of flora and fauna widely spread across ancient Beringia, that were able to migrate along the Bering Land Bridge from Asia - America and back.  Contemporary flora and fauna are a mix of Arctic, Southern, Central Asian andAmericataxons. R. S. Fedyuk (2004)

For some dazzling wildlife images:  http://eng.ostrovwrangelya.org/nature.html
the Russian State Nature Reserve which reports:
 
"The flora of Wrangel Island has no equal in the Arctic for its richness and level of endemism. By the present time 417 species and subspecies of vascular plants have been identified. It is more than on all Canadian Arctic Islands and 2-2,5 times more than on the other Arctic tundra territories of similar size. Among these plants 23 taxons are endemic. Concerning endemic species Wrangel island has no equal including Greenland. A number of endemic plants (Oxytropis ushakovii, Papaver multiradiatum, Papaver chionophilum) are quite common on the island. The number of known mosses (331) and lichens (310) also leaves all the other Arctic tundra territories behind."