The Rallier du Baty Peninsula (french: Péninsule Rallier du Baty or ''Presqu'ile Rallier du Baty'') is a peninsula of Grande Terre, the main island of the

subantarctic The sub-Antarctic zone is a region in the Southern Hemisphere, located immediately north of the Antarctic region. This translates roughly to a latitude of between 46° and 60° south of the Equator. The subantarctic region includes many islands ...

Kerguelen The Kerguelen Islands ( or ; in French commonly ' but officially ', ), also known as the Desolation Islands (' in French), are a group of islands in the sub-Antarctic constituting one of the two exposed parts of the Kerguelen Plateau, a large ...

archipelago An archipelago ( ), sometimes called an island group or island chain, is a chain, cluster, or collection of islands, or sometimes a sea containing a small number of scattered islands. Examples of archipelagos include: the Indonesian Arc ...

in the southern

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by t ...

. It occupies the south-western corner of the island, and is about 35 km long, extending from north to south, and 25 km across at its widest. The 1,202 m high

Bicorne The bicorne or bicorn (two-cornered) is a historical form of hat widely adopted in the 1790s as an item of uniform by European and American army and naval officers. Most generals and staff officers of the Napoleonic period wore bicornes, whic ...

rises in the southern coast of the peninsula. It is named for

Raymond Rallier du Baty Raymond Rallier du Baty (30 August 1881 – 7 May 1978) was a French sailor and explorer, from Lorient in Brittany, who carried out surveys of the subantarctic Kerguelen Islands in the southern Indian Ocean in the early 20th century. Rallier du ...

, a French sailor who charted the archipelago in the early 20th century. The Îles Boynes, France's southernmost land apart from Adélie Land in Antarctica, lie 30 km south of the tip of the peninsula.

Important Bird Area

The western half of the peninsula has been identified by BirdLife International as a 270 km² Important Bird Area (IBA) because of its value as a breeding site for

seabird Seabirds (also known as marine birds) are birds that are adapted to life within the marine environment. While seabirds vary greatly in lifestyle, behaviour and physiology, they often exhibit striking convergent evolution, as the same enviro ...

s, with at least 31 species nesting there. The site is bordered on the north by the

Cook Glacier The Cook Ice Cap or Cook Glacier ( or ''Glacier Cook'') is a large ice cap in the Kerguelen Islands in the French Southern Territories zone of the far Southern Indian Ocean. Geography The Cook Ice Cap reaches a maximum elevation of in its centr ...

and, to the south and east, by the Arête Jérémine and the main mountain ridge of the peninsula. Because it is isolated by rivers and glaciers, it is the only part of Grande Terre free from

cat The cat (''Felis catus'') is a domestic species of small carnivorous mammal. It is the only domesticated species in the family Felidae and is commonly referred to as the domestic cat or house cat to distinguish it from the wild members of ...

s and rats, while rabbits are largely restricted to the northern part. The landscape is hilly and mostly lacks vegetation. The area shows geothermal activity, with vents emitting steam and gas. The ice capped mountains are cut by large, glaciated valleys. Human visitation is rare. The IBA is particularly important for penguins, with 10,000 pairs of eastern rockhoppers, up to 3000 pairs of gentoos, 60,000 pairs of kings and over half a million pairs of macaronis. The colony of 750 pairs of

wandering albatross The wandering albatross, snowy albatross, white-winged albatross or goonie (''Diomedea exulans'') is a large seabird from the family Diomedeidae, which has a circumpolar range in the Southern Ocean. It was the last species of albatross to be desc ...

es is the largest in Kerguelen. It is the only known breeding site in the archipelago for southern giant petrels. It also holds very large populations of smaller petrels, especially

white-headed petrel The white-headed petrel (''Pterodroma lessonii''), also known as the white-headed fulmar, is a species of seabird in the petrel family, Procellariidae. It is about in length. White-headed petrels breed alone or in colonies in burrows dug among ...

s, slender-billed and

Antarctic prion The Antarctic prion (''Pachyptila desolata'') also known as the dove prion, or totorore in Māori, is the largest of the prions, a genus of small petrels of the Southern Ocean. Taxonomy The Antarctic prion was formally described in 1789 by ...

s, and South Georgia and common diving petrels. Other birds breeding in the IBA include Eaton's pintails,

Kerguelen shag The Kerguelen shag (''Leucocarbo verrucosus'') is a species of cormorant endemic to the Kerguelen Islands in the southern Indian Ocean, one of the most isolated places on Earth. Many authorities consider it a subspecies of the imperial shag. R ...

black-faced sheathbill The black-faced sheathbill (''Chionis minor''), also known as the lesser sheathbill or paddy bird, is one of only two species of sheathbills, aberrant shorebirds which are terrestrial scavengers of subantarctic islands. Description They are du ...

s and Kerguelen terns.BirdLife International. (2012). Important Bird Areas factsheet: Péninsule Rallier du Baty. Downloaded from http://www.birdlife.org on 2012-01-11.

Vegetation

The western half of the Péninsule Rallier du Baty has the endemic but rare Lyallia Cushion.

Area management

Western Péninsule Rallier du Baty remains an area with limited access. Owing to its status as an 'Area restricted to scientific and technical research', visitors to the site are mostly scientists or researchers. The area could also be turned into a nature reserve in the future. Colonization of the site by mammalian species such as rats has gone up in the recent years as the natural barrier that were the glaciers have been shrinking.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Peninsule Rallier Du Baty Landforms of the Kerguelen Islands Important Bird Areas of Kerguelen Rallier du Baty Peninsulas of France