St Helena National Trust

Cherish our past, value our future

welcome to the st helena national trust

Welcome to the St Helena National Trust website. The National Trust is responsible for the protection, enhancement and promotion of St Helena’s unique environmental and cultural heritage. The Trust’s activities include restoring the island’s fragile Gumwood forests, conserving the endemic Wirebird, promoting the protection of the historic buildings and fortifications, and educating and training local people.

The website provides News about the Trust (through a quarterly newsletter), as well as more general conservation and environmental news on the island. To find out more on the Trust’s conservation work please visit the Projects page.

The Trust relies on your support. To join the Trust or support our work please visit the Donate and Membership pages. Why not sponsor a tree at the Millennium Forest? Whether you want to give a memorable gift to a loved one, or offset your carbon emissions, a globally unique Gumwood tree is ideal.

Would you like to conserve rare plants on a remote island

The St Helena National Trust is recruiting two positions to deliver an exciting new conservation and training project on the island. To find out more about the project read below.

The positions are:

Restoration Ecologist – click here for more information
Horticulturalist – click here for more information

To apply please email your CV and a covering letter why you are the right person for the job to: Jamie Roberts, Director, sth.nattrust@cwimail.sh

Deadline for applications is Monday 28 June 2010.

Apply Now!

About the project

St Helena holds a rich and globally unique biological heritage, which includes over 400 known endemic species. However a large proportion of the island’s flora and fauna is now on the brink of extinction, surviving in isolated remnant habitats which are facing significant ongoing threats, particularly rapid encroachment by invasive species and increasing erosion.

The new Darwin Initiative project will tackle these threats through increasing local conservation capacity and restoring two key natural areas. It will increase capacity through providing practical on-the-ground training in conservation techniques including invasives control, habitat assessment, endemic plant community restoration and effective site management. It will establish a conservation apprenticeship programme, including a new NVQ, which will ensure that skills needs are addressed long-term. The project will also work to restore High Peak, a moist forest habitat, and Blue Point, a dryland habitat. Both hold important populations of endemic species.

The project will be run by the St Helena National Trust. The Trust is responsible for the protection, enhancement and promotion of St Helena’s unique environmental and cultural heritage.

The project is funded through the Darwin Initiative, which is funded by UK Government department Defra.

Race against time to save the Bastard Gumwood

The National Trust and others are currently working flat out to save what they believe could be the last living Bastard Gumwood tree (Commidendrum rotundifolium) in the world, which will go extinct unless urgent action is taken. The last tree is showing signs of old age, and might not survive for many more flowering seasons.

bastard gumwood

The rescue team is hoping to obtain seed from the tree, so that new seedlings can be grown. However this is not easy. The Bastard Gumwood is reluctant to pollinate itself, and because there are no other individuals in existence, it needs human help. Volunteers are visiting the tree every day and hand pollinating it using tiny paintbrushes. To prevent the tree from ‘cross-pollinating’ with its close relative the False Gumwood, which grows nearby, a special tent has been constructed around it to prevent insects from getting in. If cross-pollination occurs then the seed will not be pure and cannot be used. bastard gumwood

The rescue attempt is being carried out by ANRD, the National Trust, staff from the Critical Species Recovery project and volunteers from the Nature Conservation Group. Dr Rebecca Cairns-Wicks, President of the Trust and on the rescue team, says: “In 2003 we witnessed the extinction of the St Helena Olive, a tragic loss to St Helena and the world that we hoped would never be repeated again. Now as we begin the New Year of 2010 we are faced with the possibility that another unique St Helena endemic might slip into extinction. We are all working to keep the tree healthy and secure seed upon which the future of this species will depend. Even if we are successful it is going to take years of hard work to pull this species back from the brink of extinction”.

The Bastard Gumwood has already come close to extinction in the past, and indeed was thought to have been lost until Stedson Stroud and George Benjamin discovered a single survivor on cliffs at Horse Pasture in 1982 – the first sighting since the 1890s. The tree died a few years later, but a few seed were successfully germinated and several plants reared. Unfortunately most of the survivors were impure crosses with the False Gumwood.

‘It’s very important for the island that we do everything we can to save the last Bastard Gumwood tree,’ says National Trust Director Jamie Roberts. ‘Many of the tourists who come to St Helena want to see the island’s unique wildlife. Another extinction would be very bad publicity for the island’.

Despite its name, the Bastard Gumwood is a pure and ancient species which may once have covered the lower slopes of St. Helena. It is one of four species which makes up the endemic gumwoods of St Helena (the others are the Scrubwood, Gumwood and the False Gumwood). These species are all found nowhere else in the world. The False Gumwood is also on the Critically Endangered list with only eight trees left in the wild. The Gumwood, which is the national tree of St Helena, is being conserved by the National Trust at the Millennium Forest, where over eight thousand Gumwood trees have been planted since 2000. The key wild site for the tree is at Peak Dale, where the Trust, ANRD and others have recently been carrying out site improvement works.

Picture left: Bastard Gumwood in a protective cage

READ OUR LASTEST NEWSLETTER

Our lastest newsletter is from January - March 2010. It contains the following:

Trust wins £300,000 Darwin funding for natural environment

The St Helena National Trust has been awarded £300,000 by the Darwin Initiative for a new 3 year project that will help to protect St Helena’s internationally important biodiversity...

Mapping a new future for the Trust

The National Trust has been in existence since 2002. During that time there have been some impressive achievements – including the planting of over 10,000 trees at the Millennium Forest – along with some of the challenges that are associated with trying to operate on a small depopulating island with few sources of funding...

Good news as Wirebird numbers increase

The 2010 Wirebird census count undertaken by the National Trust has shown a welcome increase of almost a quarter compared to last year. The fieldwork was carried out in January by Wirebird Conservation Officer Eddie Duff and a small team of dedicated volunteers...

FULL NEWSLETTER

St Helena’s Millennium Forest: A symbol of small islands fight to defend fragile eco-systems

14 million years ago volcanic activity gave birth to a small island in the middle of the South Atlantic. For 0.003% of this time the island was left to its own devices. Mankind did not know of its existence until 2nd May 1502 when the Portuguese named it St Helena, after the saint commemorated on the day of its discovery. The Portuguese did not establish any permanent settlements. The British colonised it in 1659, establishing a permanent settlement immediately.

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