The North-east Saint Helena Important Bird Area is a 48 km² tract of land covering about 39% of the island of Saint Helena, a British Overseas Territory in the South

Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...

. It has been identified by BirdLife International as an Important Bird Area (IBA) because it supports several

colonies In modern parlance, a colony is a territory subject to a form of foreign rule. Though dominated by the foreign colonizers, colonies remain separate from the administration of the original country of the colonizers, the '' metropolitan state'' ...

of breeding

seabird Seabirds (also known as marine birds) are birds that are adapted to life within the marine environment. While seabirds vary greatly in lifestyle, behaviour and physiology, they often exhibit striking convergent evolution, as the same enviro ...

s, including the

red-billed tropicbird The red-billed tropicbird (''Phaethon aethereus'') is a tropicbird, one of three closely related species of seabird of tropical oceans. Superficially resembling a tern in appearance, it has mostly white plumage with some black markings on the wi ...

, as well as much of the remaining habitat of the

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found else ...

, and critically endangered, Saint Helena plover.

Description

The site covers north-eastern Saint Helena, from the eastern end of Diana's Peak National Park to the

basalt Basalt (; ) is an aphanitic (fine-grained) extrusive igneous rock formed from the rapid cooling of low-viscosity lava rich in magnesium and iron (mafic lava) exposed at or very near the surface of a rocky planet or moon. More than 90 ...

ic stacks of Shore Island, George Island and other offshore rocks which support the seabird colonies. The three vegetation zones comprise an arid, eroded lowland below 350 m, an intermediate zone at 350–500 m of pasture and non-indigenous woodland, and a moist highland zone characterised by

woodland A woodland () is, in the broad sense, land covered with trees, or in a narrow sense, synonymous with wood (or in the U.S., the ''plurale tantum'' woods), a low-density forest forming open habitats with plenty of sunlight and limited shade (se ...

and flax plantations. The coast is dominated by sea cliffs rising mainly to between 300 and 570 m. The islets are bare with heavy guano deposits. Localities within the site include eight Saint Helena plover breeding sites – Bottomwoods, Deadwood Plain, Horse Point Plain, Longwood Farm, Sane Valley, Prosperous Bay North, Prosperous Bay Plain and Upper Prosperous Bay. Horse Point Plain is the only place from which live specimens of the critically endangered, possibly extinct,

invertebrate Invertebrates are a paraphyletic group of animals that neither possess nor develop a vertebral column (commonly known as a ''backbone'' or ''spine''), derived from the notochord. This is a grouping including all animals apart from the chordate ...

s '' Labidura herculeana'' and '' Aplothorax burchelli'' have been recorded. There are also important fossil sites at Dry Gut, Flagstaff Hill, Prosperous Bay and Sugarloaf.

References

{{coord, 15, 57, S, 05, 40, W, type:landmark_region:SH, display=title Important Bird Areas of Saint Helena Geography of Saint Helena

Description

See also

References