by Charl de Villiers
SOUTH Africa’s only overseas territory, the sub-Antarctic Prince Edward Islands, are to be nominated for listing under Unesco’s World Heritage Convention. Lying some 2180km south-east of Cape Town, the Prince Edward Islands represent a significant part of an extremely rare and threatened ecosystem on a global scale – that of the Southern Ocean and its sub-Antarctic islands. The World Heritage Site nomination report is being prepared by the Pretoria-based Environomics consultancy on behalf of the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism (DEA&T).
Mr Richard Skinner, Acting Director of the Directorate: Antarctica and Islands, said the nomination bid had followed an IUCN-World Conservation assessment of World Heritage values of Southern Ocean Islands in which Prince Edward Island, South Georgia and Heard Island had ranked highest among sub-Antarctic islands. "Based on a recommendation for WHS nomination by the Prince Edward Islands Management Committee, the South African World Heritage Committee found that we managed the islands well enough – and particularly Prince Edward – to meet all the requirements for a submission to the World Heritage Commission," Mr Skinner said. Explaining the nomination process, Environomics spokesperson Reuben Heydenrych said the report first had to be reviewed by the DEA&T and accepted by the South African World Heritage Committee before it could be submitted to the World Heritage Commission (WHC). "We’re aiming to meet the WHC’s July 1, 2001, deadline. However, it will take at least another year – and an inspection of Marion Island – for the WHC to decide whether to accept the nomination or not," he said.
In terms of the draft nomination report, the entire terrestrial habitat of both Prince Edward Island and Marion Island – as well as the territorial waters extending to 12 nautical miles offshore – are proposed for inscription as a World Heritage Site. The islands’ current management zones, as provided for by the official Prince Edward Islands’ Management Plan, will remain unchanged should the islands get World Heritage status.
Besides supporting globally significant seabird and marine mammal populations, the Prince Edward Islands have been the subject of some 50 years of integrated scientific research which has provided an invaluable baseline for long-term ecological work. Two key areas of globally important and integrated research fields have developed from this fundamental ecological work – the nature and influence of biological invasions, and the effect of climate change on indigenous species and their interactions with invasive species. As such, the Prince Edward Islands provide an invaluable natural laboratory for investigating these topics in the face of the dramatic change in the climates of Southern Ocean islands and the absence of most invasive species on the near-pristine Prince Edward Island.
The draft report states that, with one exception, the Prince Edward Islands supports more species of breeding birds than any other of the major oceanic islands or island groups in the Southern Ocean beyond the Antarctic Treaty Area. The number of bird species – and the numerical abundance of some of these – stand to increase as feral house cats, the scourge of seabirds on many islands, have been eradicated from Marion Island Besides the fact that most bird species breeding on the Prince Edward Islands breed on less than 10 island groups, these islands and their natural inhabitants are highly susceptible to introduced alien species. Seabird populations are especially vulnerable to predation by feral cats and rats, as well as the modification of their breeding habitat by rabbits, sheep and cattle. "It is thus obvious that islands free of such introduced mammals represent globally significant breeding sites for seabirds. The Prince Edward Islands are one of only two sub-Antarctic island groups which are currently completely free of both cats and rats (the other is the Heard and McDonald Island group), although Marion Island does have mice," the draft report says.
"Of all the islands of the Southern Ocean (including cool-temperate, sub-Antarctic, and Maritime Antarctic Islands), Prince Edward Island emerges as the island with the best compromise between biodiversity and absence of human impacts. The combination of the quality of breeding habitat on Prince Edward Island and the quantity on Marion Island, make this island group an area worthy of the highest conservation status," the draft report argues.
