The Heard and McDonald Islands Are a Pristine Organic Wonderland
Trump’s tariffs put a highlight on the uninhabited Heard and McDonald Islands, which comprise a distant volcanic refuge for penguins and seals and a UNESCO World Heritage web site
A handout photograph taken on November 21, 2012 and launched on October 8, 2024 by the Australian Antarctic Division exhibits a waddle of King penguins standing on the shores of Corinthian Bay within the Australian territory of Heard Island within the Southern Ocean. Australia’s authorities moved on October 8, 2024 to guard a swathe of ocean territory by increasing an Antarctic marine park that’s house to penguins, seals, whales and the nation’s solely two lively volcanos.
Matt Curnock/Australian Antartic Division/AFP by way of Getty Photos
Among the many barrage of tariffs introduced by U.S. president Donald Trump on Wednesday had been these imposed (bafflingly to many) on a set of distant, pristine and storm-battered islands with no human inhabitants: their important denizens are penguins and seals. Heard Island and the McDonald Islands, which had been named a UNESCO World Heritage web site in 1997 and symbolize Earth’s solely volcanically lively sub-Antarctic islands, had been slapped with a ten p.c tariff.
The place are Heard Island and the McDonald Islands?
These islands are positioned within the Indian Ocean, about midway between Australia and South Africa and 1,700 kilometers north of Antarctica.
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Heard Island was found by American sailor John Heard in 1853. William McDonald, additionally an American, found the McDonald Islands the next yr.
The islands are a territory of Australia, transferred from U.Okay. management in 1947, and canopy an space about twice the scale of Washington, D.C.
What are the geography and geology of the Heard and McDonald Islands?
The McDonald Islands are a lot smaller than Heard Island and are rocky. Heard Island is 80 p.c lined by ice and options a big massif, or compact group of mountains, known as Huge Ben that has an lively volcano known as Mawson Peak at its summit.
A volcano on the McDonald Islands emerged from a 75,000-year interval of dormancy in 1992. And lava from a 1996 eruption doubled the scale of McDonald Island, the most important of the McDonald Islands. The newest eruption of this volcano was in 2005. Each volcanoes are fed by a plume of magma from Earth’s mantle, akin to the plume that shaped the Hawaiian Islands.
As the one volcanically lively islands within the Antarctic areas, these islands “open a window into the earth,” in response to their UNESCO entry, as a result of they supply a chance to review how crustal plates type ocean basins and continents. In addition they permit researchers to review how glacial adjustments have an effect on coastal and submarine environments, in addition to the results of local weather change on the oceans and environment.
The islands obtain frequent rain, snow and different precipitation, together with robust winds, due to their latitude. Cloud cowl is frequent.
Heard Island’s glaciers are comparatively shallow and fast-moving. They’ve responded to rising international temperatures extra rapidly than glaciers elsewhere, retreating considerably in recent times, in response to UNESCO.
What lives on the Heard and McDonald Islands?
These are additionally the one sub-Antarctic islands which have remained almost freed from nonnative species and have seen minimal results from people. This implies they’ve monumental conservation worth. There are not any human settlements on the islands, and they’re managed as a nature reserve by the Australian authorities.
The islands’ populations of marine birds and mammals quantity within the tens of millions, in response to UNESCO. They host main breeding populations of elephant and fur seals, petrels, albatrosses and penguins.
The islands are additionally house to species which might be discovered nowhere else. These embody the Heard Island Cormorant and a sheathbill subspecies known as the Heard Island Sheathbill.
Do the islands have any exports that are actually affected by the tariff or another financial exercise?
Within the mid-Nineteenth century, hunters harvested elephant seal oil on the islands, killing off most of their seals earlier than the observe was led to 1877.
The primary scientific expedition to the islands was made by a British ship known as the HMS Challenger in 1874. Australia had a analysis station on Heard Island for a time, however it was closed in 1955, after the nation opened a station on the Antarctic mainland. The Australian Antarctic Program is trying to do extra analysis across the islands sooner or later.
A really small variety of non-public yachts and vacationer vessels have visited Heard Island, however few have landed due to the tough climate.
No people are identified to have stayed on the islands for any substantial size of time since a winter analysis program in 1992, in response to UNESCO. There are strict visitation and quarantine controls due to the islands’ nature reserve designation.
Restricted industrial fishing of mackerel icefish (Champsocephalus gunnari) and Patagonian toothfish (Dissostichus eleginoides) is presently permitted in a few of the waters across the islands. And curiosity in fishing there and elsewhere in Antarctic waters is predicted to extend. Australian Protection Pressure vessels assist implement fishery guidelines.
