Steeple Jason Island

Population and geography

None of the Jason Islands has ever been properly inhabited. Steeple Jason was used for sheep grazing up until the 1980s. There are the remains of a disused shearing shed on the island. There is also the Steinhart Station, a field research station on the island, built in 2003 for monitoring wildlife.

The island is surrounded by a low-lying land around the shore, which quickly rises into a steep peak, hence the island's name.

The island was formerly owned by New York philanthropist Michael Steinhardt, who later donated them to the Bronx Zoo based Wildlife Conservation Society.

Wildlife

Steeple Jason is a home to the largest colony of black-browed albatrosses in the world. Over 70% of the global population of black-browed albatross breed in the Falkland Islands.

Other birdlife includes southern rockhopper penguins, Magellanic penguins, gentoo penguins, slender-billed prions, caracaras and tussac-birds. The Magellanic penguin is near the southern part of its range here, but the more cold-tolerant gentoo also occurs substantially south into Antarctica. The sole mammalian life is marine, e.g. sea lions, and fur seals.

Large beds of kelp surround the island, and the land is covered in grasses common to the other Falkland Islands, such as tussac grass.

Birds and other wildlife on Steeple Jason Island are in many cases under threat, chiefly due to overfishing in the South Atlantic Ocean over the last century.