Ilhéu Raso is an uninhabited volcanic island of Resolução nº 36/2016
, Estratégia e Plano Nacional de Negócios das Áreas Protegidas in the Barlavento

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands. An archipelago may be in an ocean, a sea, or a smaller body of water. Example archipelagos include the Aegean Islands (the o ...

Cape Verde Cape Verde or Cabo Verde, officially the Republic of Cabo Verde, is an island country and archipelagic state of West Africa in the central Atlantic Ocean, consisting of ten volcanic islands with a combined land area of about . These islands ...

. It is flanked by the smaller Branco islet to the west and by São Nicolau island on its eastern side. The distance from the island of São Nicolau is . Together with Santa Luzia and Ilhéu Branco, Ilhéu Raso is on the tentative list of UNESCO's

World Heritage Site World Heritage Sites are landmarks and areas with legal protection under an treaty, international treaty administered by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, or scientific significance. The sites are judged to contain "cultural and natural ...

s.Complexe d’aires Protégées de l’île de Santa Luzia et des Ilots Branco et Raso
UNESCO Since 1990, the islet is part of the protected area ''Reserva Natural Integral de Santa Luzia''. The island is long by wide,Cabo Verde, Statistical Yearbook 2015
Instituto Nacional de Estatística, p. 25 Its highest point is Monte da Ribeira Ladrão, elevation

above sea level Height above mean sea level is a measure of a location's vertical distance (height, elevation or altitude) in reference to a vertical datum based on a historic mean sea level. In geodesy, it is formalized as orthometric height. The zero level ...

.Tactical Pilotage Chart K-0A
Perry–Castañeda Map Collection The south-western part is a dry, boulder-strewn plain. There is little vegetation apart from an area of grassland in the south-west. The entire coastline consists of rocky cliffs.

Fauna

Raso is now the only home of the

critically endangered An IUCN Red List critically endangered (CR or sometimes CE) species is one that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as facing an extremely high risk of extinction in the wild. As of December 2023, of t ...

Raso lark (about 45 pairs). The island has been identified as an

Important Bird Area An Important Bird and Biodiversity Area (IBA) is an area identified using an internationally agreed set of criteria as being globally important for the conservation of bird populations. IBA was developed and sites are identified by BirdLife Int ...

(IBA) by

BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding i ...

because, as well as the larks, it supports populations of Cape Verde shearwaters (with an estimated 2500–3750 breeding pairs), red-billed tropicbirds (25–40 pairs), Cape Verde barn owls and Iago sparrows, others include '' Oceanodroma castro''. It is one of only two islands where the extinct Cape Verde giant skink has been recorded. The giant wall gecko (''Tarentola gigas'') and a

skink Skinks are a type of lizard belonging to the family (biology), family Scincidae, a family in the Taxonomic rank, infraorder Scincomorpha. With more than 1,500 described species across 100 different taxonomic genera, the family Scincidae is one o ...

('' Mabuya stangeri'') still occur.

References

External links

Fauna and flora of Cape VerdeIlhéu Raso
(BirdLife International)
« Étude de cas : Ilhéu Raso »
(Biosfera I) {{DEFAULTSORT:Ilheu Raso Uninhabited islands of Cape Verde Important Bird Areas of Cape Verde