The Islands are home to a great variety of wildlife.
The uninhabited islands especially provide nesting sanctuaries for
many species of birds, some of them at the extreme edge of their
range. Each autumn Scilly, as the nearest landfall to America, expects
and welcomes a new instalment of rare migrants.
Limited traffic on the
off-islands, plentiful windbreaks and pine woods provide an ideal
setting in which one of Britain's most important bird populations
flourishes in safety.
Monitoring
the impact of changes in the environment and ensuring the preservation
of this island refuge is one of the Trust's principal objectives.
The climate encourages
many indigenous plants as well as exotics from all corners of the
world to flourish in Scilly.
Wild flowers of all descriptions
can be found along the hedgerows of the larger islands with each passing
season exhibiting a random and continuing change of colour shades.
Heaths, and heathers interspersed with swathes of sea pinks flourish
on the exposed westerly faces of the archipeligo.
In the shallow clean seas
is a sparkling garden of jewel anemones, brilliant sponges and corals,
surrounded by vast kelp forests and wild prairies of sea-grass. The
seas are also home to a great range of creatures from seals and dolphins
to starfish and plankton.
