When he was just three years old, Russian Nikita Ovsyanikov told his mother that he wanted to work with animals. He stuck to his word. Ovsyanikov grew up to study biology and zoology at Moscow State University, then spent over a dozen years studying the Arctic fox. In 1990, he switched his focus to an even bigger animal: the polar bear.
To observe these creatures in the wild, he spent years living on remote Wrangel Island, a polar bear denning location in the East Siberian Sea. “If you want to know how animals live, what their interaction with their environment is like, you have to observe it,” Ovsyanikov says. “When I decided to do this kind of research, I had to choose to live in the wilderness. The more of your own lifetime you invest in this activity, the more you learn.”
Now mainly retired from field research, Ovsyanikov works as a guide and lecturer with Arctic-tourism outfitter Quark Expeditions. We called him at his remote cabin to talk about his life’s work.