Espiritu Santo
| Espíritu Santo | ||
|---|---|---|
 |
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| Waters | Pacific Ocean | |
| Archipelago | New Hebrides | |
| Geographical location | 15 ° 16 ′ S , 166 ° 55 ′ E | |
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| length | 118 km | |
| width | 61 km | |
| surface | 3955.5 | |
| Highest elevation |
Tabwemasana 1879 m |
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| main place | Luganville | |
 |
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Espiritu Santo (from Spanish Espíritu Santo , "Holy Spirit"), sometimes just called Santo , is the largest and westernmost island of the South Pacific island state of Vanuatu with an area of 3955.5 km² . The island forms with the island of Malo and some quite small islets (e.g. Dany Island ) at the same time the Vanuatu province of Sanma .
Santo owes its name to the navigator Pedro Fernández de Quirós , who, when he arrived on the island of the New Hebrides in 1606, was mistakenly believed to have landed in Terra Australis Incognita . He therefore called the island La Austrialia del Espíritu Santo .
The highest point on the island , like Vanuatus, is the Tabwemasana (1879 m) in the mountainous, inaccessible western part of the island. Luganville (14,000 inhabitants) in the southeast of Santo is Vanuatu's second largest city after Port Vila (48,000 inhabitants).
The island's economy consists mainly of the cultivation of coffee and cocoa as well as fishing and, to an increasing extent, tourism , especially diving tourism .
With the Vatthe Conservation Area , there has been Vanuatu's first nature reserve on Espíritu Santo since 1994 . It opens up mainly tropical rainforest on almost 23 km² in the north of the island and was set up to protect biodiversity. The species found on Espírito Santo include the Baker fruit pigeon , which is classified as endangered by the IUCN , and the Santa Cruz pigeon , which is considered critically endangered.
The island played through an airfield on which u. a. B-17 bombers were stationed, a role in World War II, u. a. at the Battle of Guadalcanal in November 1942.
Movie
For the series Pazifikgeschwader 214 , the island was renamed Espiritos Marcos.
literature
- From the Space Partisans , a book series by Mark Brandis , a book (test file Kolibri) plays on Espíritu Santo.
- The photojournalist Rick Williamson describes life in a Melanesian group on the island in his book Tavua, the white cannibal (Verlag Hörnig, Ludwigshafen 2007, ISBN 978-3-938921-04-3 ).
swell
- ↑ BirdLife Factsheet about the Baker fruit pigeon , accessed June 29, 2009
- ↑ BirdLife Factsheet about the Santa Cruz Pigeon , accessed July 4, 2009
