Population
The only permanently inhabited locality is the village of Nikolskoye on the northwest end of Bering Island, with an estimated population of 613 as of 2009. The population consists almost entirely of Russians and Aleuts. The majority of the islands' area, as well as much of the adjacent marine habitat (14,088 square miles (36,488 km2)), is taken up by the Komandorsky Zapovednik, a natural preserve. The economy is based primarily on fishing, mushroom gathering, the administration of the zapovednik, ecotourism, and government services.
The village has a school, a satellite tracking station and a dirt airstrip south of the village.
The other settlements on the two islands are small villages or scattering of houses:
- Severnoye
- Podutesnaya
- Gladkovskeya
- Lisennova
- Peschanka
- Preobrajenskoe Settlement at Peschanaya Bay on Medniy Island - abandoned
- Glinka
Read more about this topic: Commander Islands
Famous quotes containing the word population:
“This was the Eastham famous of late years for its camp- meetings, held in a grove near by, to which thousands flock from all parts of the Bay. We conjectured that the reason for the perhaps unusual, if not unhealthful development of the religious sentiment here, was the fact that a large portion of the population are women whose husbands and sons are either abroad on the sea, or else drowned, and there is nobody but they and the ministers left behind.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Like other cities created overnight in the Outlet, Woodward acquired between noon and sunset of September 16, 1893, a population of five thousand; and that night a voluntary committee on law and order sent around the warning, “if you must shoot, shoot straight up!””
—State of Oklahoma, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“America is like one of those old-fashioned six-cylinder truck engines that can be missing two sparkplugs and have a broken flywheel and have a crankshaft that’s 5000 millimeters off fitting properly, and two bad ball-bearings, and still runs. We’re in that kind of situation. We can have substantial parts of the population committing suicide, and still run and look fairly good.”
—Thomas McGuane (b. 1939)