UK OVERSEAS TERRITORIES CONSERVATION FORUM
Virtual Tours: St. Helena
The Full Tour
Map
Introduction
Features of Natural Interest
Features of Other Interest, including Cultural
Threats / Problems / Issues
Projects / Conservation Actions
Opportunities
Organisations and Links
Tour Selection
Threats / Problems / Issues

As is common with islands, much of the endemic flora and fauna is highly threatened due to fragmentation and loss of their specialist habitat, competition and/or predation from invasive species. A large amount of habitat destruction has occurred on St Helena over the years, especially to the forests which clothed much of the inner zone and which were cut for timber and firewood. Fragments of cloud forest are now confined only to High Peak and the Diana’s Peak range, but these have been substantially degraded following invasion by numerous non-native plant species. Vigorous competitors such as whiteweed Austroeupatorium inulifolium, small fuchsia Fuchsia coccinea, bilberry tree Solanum mauritianum and lackberry Rubus pinnatus are well evidenced problems, but other small, ground cover species are likely to have imposed more subtle, yet important, pressures on native species. Darwin Plus project DPLUS059 began in April 2017 which aims to take an innovative landscape approach to establish the national framework for invasive plant management on St Helena.


 


(Threats / Problems / Issues, 1 of 4 - Slide ref. 1008)