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Neil MacFarquhar, Geysers, Mushers and Sled Dogs Vie With Growth; In Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula, efforts to keep natural splendor meet hunt for gold and oil. New York Times, Apr 4, 2015.
www.nytimes.com/2015/04/05/world ... ts-over-growth.html

Excerpt in the window of print: A land of astounding beauty emerges from isolation.

QuoteL

Kamchatka peninsula is “about 750 miles long and 300 miles across at its widest point. ‘The territory is not as big as Alaska,’ said Sergey Rafanov, the director of the World Wildlife Fund’s local branch. ‘Everything is compact here’

“In Soviet times, Kamchatka was a naval base closed to foreigners. After the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union, the population gradually ebbed, dropping by around a third, to 300,000.

“Fish, salmon roe and crabs constitute Kamchatka’s most famous exports.

“It has been said that Kamchatka is so far east of Moscow that it is practically west. The nine-hour flight from Moscow lasts almost three times longer than flights from Anchorage. (Those run only in the summer.) It is little wonder, then, that Kamchatkans look to Alaska for inspiration for everything from building a tourism industry to making protective bootees for their sled dogs.


Note:
(a)
(i) Kamchatka Peninsula
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kamchatka_Peninsula
(More than half of the population lives in Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky (179,526 people in 2010) and nearby Yelizovo (38,980); Kamchatka receives up to 2.7m  of precipitation per year; Although Kamchatka lies at similar latitudes to Great Britain, cold arctic winds from Siberia combined with the cold Oyashio [Japanese: 親潮] sea current see the peninsula covered in snow from October to late May; section 4 Terrestrial and aquatic fauna: "The peninsula is the breeding ground for Steller's sea eagle, one of the largest eagle species, along with the golden eagle and gyr falcon * * * biologists estimate that a fifth of all Pacific salmon originates in Kamchatka"))
(ii) Kamchatka. Online Etymology Dictionary, undated
www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=Kamchatka
(“Siberian peninsula, named for a native people, the Kamchadal, from Koriak konchachal, said to mean ‘men of the far end’ ")

The English word Kamchatka is transliterated from Russian word for the peninsula.

(b)
(i) Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky
(city and the administrative center of Kamchatka Krai; section 2 History: Bering founded it in 1740, "naming the new settlement ‘Petropavlovsk’ (Peter and Paul) after his two ships, the St Peter and the St Paul")
(ii) Paul (name)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_(name)
(section 3 Translations: Russian: Pol, Pavel, Pasha)
(iii) Pavlov (surname)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlov_(surname)

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(c) "Vladislav Revenok, an Orthodox priest, first participated in the obscure Russian version of Alaska’s Iditarod"
(i) Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iditarod_Trail_Sled_Dog_Race
(section 1 Name)

(d) “Oil exploration has started in the Sea of Okhotsk, which separates the peninsula from mainland Russia, and the first natural gas wells now operate onshore.”
(i) Okhotsk
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhotsk
("the administrative center of Okhotsky District of Khabarovsk Krai, Russia, located at the mouth of the Okhota River on the Sea of Okhotsk")
(ii) Okhota River
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhota_River
(Russian: Охота, lit. hunting, and from a Tungus word meaning "river")

(e) fauna: “Environmentalists have doubts. Populations of the largest bears and big-horned sheep have already been decimated, they said, because trophy hunters from the United States and Europe were unleashed without regulations. A black market for Kamchatka falcons fetches $50,000 per bird in the Persian Gulf nations
(i) Google (Kamchatka bighorn).
(ii) Look back at (a)(i).

gyrfalcon
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyrfalcon
(the largest of the falcon species; The bird's common name comes from French; Females are bulkier and larger, at 51 to 65 cm (20 to 26 in) long)

(f) “protective bootees for their sled dogs”
(i) bootee/bootie/booty are all the same, except when

booty
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Booty
(may refer to: American slang for buttocks)
(ii) bootee (n): "a usually ankle-length boot, slipper, or sock; especially :  an infant's knitted or crocheted sock"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bootee

(g) “The annual Beringia dog sled race was conceived 25 years ago as Russia’s answer to the Iditarod, but it has never attracted the same international following. * * * The race was named after a legendary land mass said to have once linked the region to Alaska, allowing indigenous people to travel freely. Kamchatka’s indigenous population currently numbers about 15,000.”
(i) Shared Beringian Heritage Program. National Park Service (NPS), US Department of the Interior, undated
www.nps.gov/akso/beringia/
("The Shared Beringian Heritage Program recognizes and celebrates the natural resources and cultural heritage shared by Russia and the United States on both sides of the Bering Strait")
(ii) What is Beringia?  NPS, undated
www.nps.gov/bela/learn/historyculture/beringia.htm
(“About 12,000 years ago during the Last Ice Age, the water level of the oceans was lower, exposing land that today is under the Bering and Chukchi Seas. During the glacial epoch this was part of a migration route for people, animals, and plants. Most archeologists agree that it was across this Bering Land Bridge, also called Beringia, that many human populations first passed from Asia to populate the Americas. The preserve's western boundary lies 42 miles from the Bering Strait and the fishing boundary between the United States and Russia”)

Sea level then was lower because water was locked in glaciers.
(iii) For Beringia pronunciation, see
www.oxforddictionaries.com/us/de ... an_english/Beringia