New Year Island (Tasmania)

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New Year Island
New Year Island (above), including the neighboring island Christmas Island, at the lower edge of the picture the northwest coast of King Island
New Year Island (above), including the neighboring island Christmas Island, at the lower edge of the picture the northwest coast of King Island
Waters Bass Street
Archipelago New Year Island Group
Geographical location 39 ° 40 ′ 12 ″  S , 143 ° 49 ′ 12 ″  E Coordinates: 39 ° 40 ′ 12 ″  S , 143 ° 49 ′ 12 ″  E
New Year Island (Tasmania) (Australia)
New Year Island (Tasmania)
surface 98.22 ha
Highest elevation 3  m
Residents uninhabited
Overview of King Island and (offshore in the northwest) New Year Island
Overview of King Island and (offshore in the northwest) New Year Island

New Year Iceland (English for New Year's Island ) is an uninhabited, 98.22  hectares large island in southeastern Australia , which the state of Tasmania belongs. She is part and at the same time namesake of the New Year Island Group . Further south, separated by a sea ​​passage about 600 meters wide, lies  the somewhat smaller, also uninhabited island of Christmas Island ; the nearest inhabited island is King Island, east to south, about three miles away.

Towards the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century, New Year Island was an economically important location for seal hunts and the loading of pelts , seal meat and oil . today it is a protected area in the form of a game reserve , especially for birds .

location

The island is located northwest of King Island and thus northwest of the north-western tip of Tasmania, about halfway between Cape Grim in Tasmania and Cape Otway in Victoria .

It is located on the northern edge of the Roaring Forties , a region of west wind drift between the 40th and 50th  degrees south latitude . Strong westerly winds prevail for much of the year; this often results in strong ocean currents and high swell , which resulted in great dangers for the cargo sailors that were customary in the past . New Year Island is on the edge of the shelf of the Australian continent . Together with larger islands such as King Island and those of the Hunter Island Group directly in front of Tasmania, it forms a visible remnant of the former Ice Age land bridge to the Australian mainland when the sea ​​level was up to 130 meters lower. About 6000 years ago, today's island lost its connection to the main Australian land.

The allocation of New Year Iceland to a specific marine region is dependent on the respective boundaries from: Following the International Hydrographic Organization , according to which the western boundary of the Bass Strait (English: Bass Strait ) definition of Cape Otway on King Iceland to Cape Grim in the northwest Tasmania, the island is in the Indian Ocean or in the eastern part of the Great Australian Bay (in a broader sense). According to other perspectives, the western border of the Bass Strait lies further west, for example oriented towards the submarine Australian continental shelf. According to this, New Year Island is still in the western Bass Strait, which separates Tasmania from the Australian mainland as the strait .

The island is surrounded by several rocks above and below the sea and is relatively flat; its highest point is three meters above sea level. Between New Year and King Island lies the King George Strait sea passage, also known as King George Passage, with comparatively deep water, but also individual rocks and reefs; southeast of New Year Island is the anchorage Franklin Road, which was mainly used in the 19th century for boat trips to New Year, King and Christmas Island. The management of New Year Iceland is not done by the municipal authority King Iceland Municipality , but directly by the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service (PWS) as part of the Tasmanian Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment (DPIPWE) .

Older, alternative names

In the 19th century, New Year Island had slightly different names in various sources:

  • New Year's Island, in accordance with the old English-speaking customs with the genitive-s , furthermore
  • North New Year ('s) Island, as far as today's Christmas Island was called South New Year (' s) Island.

history

When exactly and by whom New Year Island was discovered is not entirely clear. There is evidence that the island was visited by fur hunters to hunt fur seals , fur seals and elephant seals as early as the 1790s . In 1802, fur hunters lived constantly on the island to skin seals and collect their pelts. The brig Harrington came to the island to collect the skins from here and the neighboring islands. The local populations were severely decimated in the following decades to the point of extermination of individual species.

There is evidence that Chinese vegetable gardeners lived and cultivated the island on the island in 1861, but this was soon abandoned. One reason could have been that the island lacks natural freshwater sources or that the residents were dependent on collected rainwater. In addition, at that time the first settlers began to clear the dense bushes and the forests on the neighboring island of King Island, on which streams guarantee an adequate water supply all year round, thereby making land arable. In the aftermath, only hunters occasionally set foot on New Year Island to catch birds and hunt seals; since 1957 this has been regulated in more detail by the authorities. In 1987, wildlife biologist Nigel Brothers of the Tasmanian Parks and Wildlife Service and a team visited Christmas Island and then New Year Island to map the islands and collect data on fauna and flora. Between 2001 and 2010 the French wildlife biologist Fabien Aubret (* 1975) regularly visited New Year Island and Christmas Island to collect data on the tiger otters , a species of snake , living there .

fauna and Flora

Short-tailed shearwater (Puffinus tenuirostris) as a young animal, as it is also raised on New Year Iceland and can be hunted to a limited extent

Large colonies of short-tailed shearwaters (Puffinus tenuirostris) populate New Year Island each year ; the migratory birds breed and raise their young there. Thinornis rubricollis rubricollis , waders from the plover family , also nest in the dune areas near the shore . Other species of sea birds and waders use the island as a resting area and the surrounding sea as a source of food. Otherwise, the flora and fauna there is similar to that of the more than 120 other islands of the Bass Strait of a similar size.

Subfossil finds

While exploring New Year Island in 1987, Brothers and his team discovered a deposit with special animal bones. In the north-east of the island, the dune sand on an area of ​​about one hectare had been removed by the wind to such an extent that skeletal parts of animals came to light, including not only those of sea birds. The surprising finds include the red-bellied filander (Thylogale billardierii) and the red-necked wallaby (Macropus rufogriseus) (both species of kangaroo) and the bare-nosed wombat (Vombatus ursinus), three types of herbivores . Since the island with its current size is far too small for three types of herbivore, it is assumed that the bones originate from a time several thousand years ago when the sea level was significantly lower and there was a land connection to King Island or Tasmania . The same is assumed for the bone finds of a giant pouch marten (Dasyurus maculatus) , which as a carnivore is dependent on standing fresh water , which on New Year Island has only been available for a long time in the form of rain-filled puddles.

Further skeletal finds could be assigned to a South African fur seal (Arctocephalus pusillus) and a (wild) pig . It is assumed that the fur seals used New Year Island as a resting zone or breeding area for young animals until the early 19th century, but were quickly exterminated there by fur hunters. It is unclear whether the bones found in the pig came from an animal that the fur hunters initially took with them as living provisions, or from the time when the island was cultivated by Chinese vegetable gardeners around 1861.

The mixture of animal bones from different epochs is explained by the migration of the sand dunes. Sites with a similar composition had previously been discovered on King Island and were described in more detail from 1973 onwards.

New Year Island Game Reserve

New Year Island has been under state protection since June 17, 1957; on the other hand, the neighboring island of Christmas Island was only placed under protection in January 1992. There is a general management plan with regular reserve reports . Since 1981, the area around New Year Island has been  classified as a " resource protection area " according to Category VI of the IUCN Protected Areas Categories System of the International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) ; This is an “area whose management serves the sustainable use of natural ecosystems and habitats”, and therefore a rather low protection status. Together with the surrounding coastal fringes, the New Year Island Game Reserve covers an area of ​​129.79 hectares. It is one of twelve protected areas of this category in Tasmania.

Together with five others, the New Year Island Game Reserve is designated as Muttonbird Island ; as a special hunting area it is the largest of its kind in Tasmania. Holders of a license for private or commercial purposes are allowed to enter the island from approximately the last week of March to the last week of April; the youngsters of the short-tailed shearwaters, mostly not yet able to fly, may be removed from the nests or rearing areas. The meat of the birds is considered to be tasty and comes - in today (2019) only to a small extent - on the market as “Tasmanian young pigeons”. The stomach oil is used for medicinal purposes. In the past, the animals were also used as fishing bait. This type of shearwater is listed as safe (least concern) by the IUCN . High population numbers and fixed catch quotas are intended to prevent catches for human consumption from having a negative impact on the stock. Collecting Muttonbirds is a tradition that was already practiced by the Tasmanian Aborigines , the Tasmanians , and played an important role in the Cape Grim massacre when four white shepherds killed 30 indigenous people in 1828.

literature

  • Nigel Brothers , David Pemberton: Tasmania's Offshore Islands: Seabirds and Other Natural Features. Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia 2001, ISBN 0-7246-4816-X , pp. 2 f. and 45-55, especially p. 46 f. and 50 f. (English).
  • Robert P. Whitworth: Bailliere's Tasmanian Gazetteer and Road Guide - Containing the Most Recent and Accurate Information as to Every Place in the Colony. FF Balliere, Melbourne 1877 (English) ( PDF ), p. 114 f. ("King's Island") and 144 ("New Year's Islands").
  • Nigel Brothers, David Pemberton, N. Smith: A subfossil site on New Year Island. (PDF). In: The Victorian Naturalist . Volume 108, Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria, Blackburn, Victoria, Australia 1991, p. 110 f. (English).
  • Norman James Brian Plomley, Kristen Anne Henley: The Sealers of Bass Strait and the Cape Barren Island Community. Blubber Head Press, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia 1990, ISBN 978-0-908528-21-9 (English).
  • François Péron, Helen Mary Micco: King Island and the sealing trade, 1802. Roebuck Society, Canberra, ACT, Australia 1971 (English).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Nigel Brothers, David Pemberton: Tasmania's Offshore Islands: Seabirds and Other Natural Features. Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, Hobart, Tasmania, Australia 2001, ISBN 0-7246-4816-X , p. 46 f. and 50 f. (English).
  2. ^ A b Fabien Aubret: Island colonization and the evolutionary rates of body size in insular neonate snakes . In: Heredity . tape 115 , no. 4 , 2015, p. 349–356 , doi : 10.1038 / hdy.2014.65 (English).
  3. ^ Kurt Lambeck , John Chappell: Sea level change through the last glacial cycle . In: Science . tape 292 , 2001, pp. 679–686 , doi : 10.1126 / science.1059549 (English).
  4. ^ International Hydrographic Organization: Limits of Oceans and Seas . 3rd edition 1953 (pdf) , accessed on February 19, 2019 (English).
  5. ↑ New Year Island in Tasmania with links to the other islands, rocks and reefs of the archipelago on the web portal mapcarta.com , accessed on February 18, 2019 (English).
  6. ^ A b c d Nigel Brothers, David Pemberton, N. Smith: A subfossil site on New Year Island . In: The Victorian Naturalist . Volume 108, Field Naturalists' Club of Victoria, Blackburn, Victoria, Australia 1991, p. 110 f. (English).
  7. ^ Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment (DPIPWE) (ed.): King Island Biodiversity Management Plan . Threatened Species Section, Hobart / Tasmania, Australia 2012, ISBN 978-0-7246-6794-9 (PDF), accessed on February 22, 2019 (English).
  8. ↑ Overview of the Tasmanian protected areas on the web portal of the Tasmania Parks and Wildlife Service (pdf) , accessed on February 22, 2019 (English).