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Evgenia Arbugaeva

Wearing a curtain and a cardboard crown, Kristina Khudi becomes the “tundra princess” in the Nenets camp near the Kara Sea. For centuries, reindeer herders in Russia’s Arctic have migrated 800 miles a year. But they now face modern obstacles in their long journey: climate change and a giant natural gas field.

A story in the April 2013 issue followed people who search the Russian Arctic for ancient tusks from woolly mammoths. In this previously unpublished photo from that story, a tusk hunter removes a mammoth tusk from a frozen riverbed.

“When we were surrounded by walruses, the hut was shaking,” Arbugaeva says. “The sound of their roaring was very loud; it was hard to sleep at night. The temperature in the hut was also raised dramatically because of the walrus body heat outside. At this massive Pacific walrus rookery, so many had hauled out on shore—about 100,000—because the warming climate meant less sea ice for them to rest on.”

John Mganga, 67, is a former assistant at Tanzania’s Amani Hill Research Station. From 1970 to 1977 he worked with British entomologist John Raybould, using insect nets to snare specimens.

A butterfly hunter rests in a remote Indonesian forest while searching for rare butterflies. The August 2018 issue featured a story that documented the hidden world of the butterfly trade.

Decked out in a cardboard crown and a curtain for a robe, an 8-year-old Nenets girl proclaims herself a "tundra princess." The Nenets are an indigenous group of people in the Russian Arctic who herd reindeer on an 800-mile round trip migration every year.

YAMAL PENINSULA, Russia A curtain makes a fine cape, a cardboard box a regal crown. “Princess of Tundra,” eight-year-old Kristina Khudi declares herself during this afternoon’s dress-up fun. Part of a Nenets reindeer herding family in Siberia’s far north, she’s home from a state boarding school for summer holidays. Photographer Evgenia Arbugaeva, who grew up in the Russian Arctic, joined the indigenous herders for an October 2017 story in the magazine. Their centuries-old annual trek, taking reindeer 800 miles through the Yamal Peninsula, is threatened by a warming climate and by a gas field development that pushes into Nenets herding lands.

A butterfly catcher on Bacan island, Indonesia, sorts his specimens, which he’ll sell in Bali.

A goliath birdwing hatches in a kitchen in West Papua, Indonesia.