Short answers, pulled from the story.
Wrangel Island is located in the Arctic Ocean between the Chukchi Sea and the East Siberian Sea, and is part of the Chukotka Autonomous Okrug of Russia. The island straddles the 180th meridian, which causes the International Date Line to be displaced eastward at that latitude.
Between 500 and 1,000 woolly mammoths became isolated on Wrangel Island after the mainland populations died out around 10,000 years ago. The island's geographic separation allowed them to survive an additional 6,000 years, persisting until approximately 2000 BC.
Wrangel Island and neighboring Herald Island were added to the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2004, making the reserve the northernmost World Heritage Site on Earth. The protected area includes the islands and surrounding waters out to 24 nautical miles.
Wrangel Island was named by American whaling captain Thomas Long in August 1867 after Baron Ferdinand von Wrangel, a Baltic German explorer and Admiral in the Imperial Russian Navy. Ironically, Baron von Wrangel searched for the island during his 1823-1824 expedition but never found it or set foot on it.
Ada Blackjack, an Iñupiat seamstress and cook, was the sole survivor of Vilhjalmur Stefansson's 1921 expedition to Wrangel Island, which had sent five settlers in an attempt to claim the island for Canada. She was rescued in 1923 after the four other expedition members died.
Wrangel Island has the highest density of polar bear dens in the world and supports populations of walrus, Arctic foxes, wolves, wolverines, and musk oxen, as well as large seabird colonies. Its 417 plant species are double those of any other comparable Arctic tundra territory, contributing to its World Heritage designation.