New Zealand Subantarctic Islands

Five island groups in the Southern Ocean south and south-east of New Zealand make up the site: the Snares, the Bounty Islands, the Antipodes, the Auckland Islands and Campbell Island. On Enderby Island in the Auckland group archaeologists have found traces of Polynesian settlement, possibly from the 13th century, the most southerly yet known. Ships of George Vancouver's expedition sighted the Snares in 1791, Abraham Bristow found the Auckland Islands in 1806 and named them after William Eden, 1st Baron Auckland, and Frederick Hasselborough came upon Campbell Island in 1810. The Antipodes were first called the Penantipodes, next to the antipodes, because they lie close to the point opposite London.

Sealers followed at once, and by 1812 so many seals had been killed on the Auckland Islands that they lost their commercial value. In 1842 a party of 70 Māori, with Moriori they held as slaves, came from the Chatham Islands and lived by sealing and growing flax, and in 1849 a whaling and farming settlement called Hardwicke was founded at Port Ross, lasting only two and a half years. When the General Grant was wrecked in 1866, ten survivors waited 18 months for rescue, and from 1887 the New Zealand authorities kept supply depots for castaways. On Campbell Island sheep were farmed from 1896 until the lease was abandoned in 1931.

The land above high water is protected as nature reserves, and introduced cattle, sheep, goats, rabbits, rats and mice have been eradicated from several islands. The groups support 126 bird species, 40 of them seabirds, and more than 95 percent of the world's New Zealand sea lions breed there; almost 2 million sooty shearwaters nest on the Snares alone. The five groups were inscribed as a World Heritage site in 1998.