Author: Nick
Tramping around the ‘big green sponge’
Forty-five degree slopes, putrid seal wallows and gale force winds – these are some of the challenges and hazards of getting around Macquarie Island. Several walking tracks provide access between field huts and key locations on the island. To go Read More …
Penguin Day
World Penguin Day (25th April) seems like a good excuse to share some photos of one of Macquarie Island’s four resident penguin species, the king penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus).
Return of the Megaherbs
Four years have passed since I first visited Macquarie Island and now the subantarctic island looks like a different place. The distinctive tussock grass is dotted across the coastal slopes in a scene reminiscent of the 1980s and 1990s when Read More …
One year after Tasmania’s alpine wildfire
In February 2017 I visited the charred landscape around Lake Mackenzie on Tasmania’s Central Plateau. Having seen many photographs of the devastation in the months after the bushfires of January 2016 I was curious to see the damage – and Read More …
Rewilding Macquarie Island
There is a long list of extinct animals which were endemic to a particular island. Island endemics are particularly vulnerable to introduced predators which can rapidly eliminate a small island population. Such was the fate of Macquarie Island’s only native Read More …
The last of Macquarie Island’s rabbits
Five years ago this month, hunters on Macquarie Island killed six rabbits. The hunters had been patrolling the Subantarctic tundra for a little over three months in the search for feral rabbits. At the time nobody knew these were the Read More …
Do treelines in the Southern Hemisphere follow the rules?
The southernmost treelines The treeline at the southern tip of South America, in Tierra del Fuego, reaches up to 600 m.a.s.l. At the same latitude, Macquarie Island has no trees or shrubs. Is the lack of trees in the Subantarctic Read More …
The limits to tree growth
What is the treeline? If you go high enough up a tall mountain there is a point where trees disappear and you transition into low alpine vegetation. The same holds if you travel toward the North Pole, where the boreal Read More …