South Georgia is a small uninhabited island situated in the Southern Ocean right between the Antarctic and the Falkland Islands. It is a British Overseas Territory. It is approximately 100 miles long by 20 miles wide. No one lives permanently on South Georgia. However, it receives approximately 15,000 visitors each year. Visitors are drawn there primarily by the island’s astonishing wildlife, but they also discover a rich and sometimes challenging human heritage.  South Georgia is home to over three million seals and over a million penguins, alongside four breeding species of albatross and, of course, the many whales that are thankfully repopulating the seas around the island. South Georgia also happens to be Sir David Attenborough’s favourite place to visit in the world, If you’ve ever seen a famous film of him standing amongst thousands of penguins then that was most likely in St Andrews Bay on South Georgia.

The island of South Georgia in the sub-Antarctic has been described as the Serengeti of the Southern Ocean due to its incredible abundance of wildlife. The South Georgia Heritage Trust (SGHT) exists to help protect South Georgia’s natural environment and to preserve its cultural heritage.

SGHT is a UK charity that, along with the USA-based not-for-profit Friends of South Georgia Island (FOSGI), work closely with the Government of South Georgia & The South Sandwich Islands (GSGSSI), British Antarctic Survey (BAS), the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO) and many others, to help deliver projects protecting and preserving South Georgia into the future. 

As well as managing the South Georgia Museum on behalf of GSGSSI for nearly 20 years, helping to protect South Georgia’s human history and creating books and education packs about the island, we’ve saved multiple bird species from extinction through successful delivery of the Habitat Restoration Project. This was the world’s largest rodent eradication initiative, and along with FOSGI, we raised over £10m to pay for SGHT’s team to remove the invasive rodents which had almost pushed native birds to extinction. In a pivotal moment for island conservation, South Georgia was declared rodent-free in 2018, and we continue to help the territory government to protect this amazing feat by ensuring strict biosecurity procedures are enforced so the island’s ecological recovery continues.

This project would not have been possible without our supporters and partners.