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Russian Smokejumper, Siberia, Russia, 2002

A Russian smokejumper leaps from an Antonov An-2 biplane to battle wildfires in a Siberian forest.

Every summer 4,000 smokejumpers from Avialesookhrana, Russia's aerial forest protection service, patrol two billion acres (809 million hectares) of the largest coniferous forest in the world extinguishing thousands of the region's 20,000 to 35,000 annual wildfires.

(Photo shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Russian Smokejumpers, " August 2002, National Geographic magazine)

Photograph by Mark Thiessen