NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CREATIVE The end result, says Kelly, is likely to be a tremendous, irreversible loss of genetic diversity. But even if that weren’t the case, the Arctic’s wildlife would st ...

This story appears in the September 2019 issue of National Geographic magazine. Sergey Zimov, right, and his son, Nikita, run an Arctic research station in Cherskiy, Russia, along the Kolyma River.

Having written for National Geographic, I felt like a star on the ... Fair warning — being near the arctic, the weather can get pretty dicey and the ocean swells are massive.