Wildlife
The Falklands has a very impressive wealth of wildlife. This includes sea life, birds, plants and insects.
Sea life: there
are large colonies of penguins, 15 species of whales and
dolphins and breeding ground for sea lions, elephant
seals and fur seals.
Birds:
there are at least 200 recorded species of birds on the Islands, including colonies of albatrosses and other birds like upland geese and peregrine falcons.
Southern Giant Petrel - Falklands Conservation
Blackish Oyster Catcher - Falklands Conservation
Plants: there are
numerous wonderful plants including over 150 flowering
plant species that are native to the Islands.
Insects: there are many unique
insects living on the Islands.
Due to the remoteness of the islands, everyone’s knowledge of the basic ecology of Falklands wildlife is still being understood, so effective conservation measures are actively being sought by Falklands Conservation to maintain and support the Island’s natural environment. For more information on their work see www.falklandsconservation.com
The need for wildlife protection in the Falkland Islands is because they have a special responsibility for rare, threatened and declining species which are classed as globally threatened, restricted (endemic) to the Falklands, non-endemic but for which the Falklands hold a substantial proportion of the world population, or whose populations in the Falklands are in significant decline. Examples of these include: the Rockhopper Penguin (now at 30% of 1930’s population: reasons unknown) Southern Sea Lion (population decline by 99% over the past 60 years: reasons unknown), Striated Caracara ( a bird of prey reported by Charles Darwin to be “exceedingly numerous” and has been reduced to a few hundred pairs by human intervention).
Penguins for example, are among the most popular of birds today yet they were exploited by mankind in the Falkland Islands for at least two centuries. Millions were slaughtered for their oil from late in the 18th century. Eggs of all four species of penguin have been taken for food since men reached the Falklands. In 1871 a colony of Rockhoppers at Sparrow Cove near Stanley yielded 25,000 eggs, but none breed there today.
In the present century the coastal breeding sites and a flightless, aquatic life style make penguins highly vulnerable to oil pollution, entanglement in marine debris and changes in the marine ecosystem. Falkland waters are already subject to large-scale commercial fisheries. The imminent exploration for oil in Falkland waters makes research into the at sea distribution status and life style of penguins an urgent priority.
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