Gough and Inaccessible Islands

Gough and Inaccessible Islands belong to the Tristan da Cunha archipelago, a British overseas territory in the South Atlantic, and are among the most remote inhabited places on the planet. Gough was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1995 and the property was extended in 2004 to include Inaccessible.

They are two of the least altered cool temperate islands left in the world: they have very few introduced plants and mammals, and their flora and land fauna evolved in absolute isolation. Inaccessible is home to the Inaccessible Island rail, the smallest flightless bird in the world, and Gough has several bird and plant species found nowhere else.

Their principal value is ornithological: Gough supports one of the largest and most diverse seabird colonies on the planet, with millions of individuals, among them almost the entire world population of the Tristan albatross and of the Atlantic petrel. That richness is under threat from an unexpected quarter: the house mice introduced by whalers in the nineteenth century have evolved to an abnormally large size and attack albatross chicks in the nest, causing enormous mortality. In 2021 a large-scale eradication operation was carried out, whose outcome has been monitored since.