Great Dog Island (Tasmania)

Great Dog Island

250px Great Dog Island (center) from space, January 1997
Great Dog Island (Tasmania)
Geography
Coordinates
Area
Country
Australia
State	Tasmania
LGA	Municipality of Flinders Island
Largest settlement	Great Dog Island village (pop. 10)
Demographics
Population	10 (as of 2014)
Density	2.67 /km2 (6.92 /sq mi)

File:Great Dog Isand aerial.jpg

Great Dog Island viewed from the air, from the east

Great Dog Island, also known as Big Dog Island, is a granite island, with an area of 354 ha, in Tasmania Australia.

It is part of Tasmania’s Great Dog Island Group, lying in eastern Bass Strait between Flinders and Cape Barren Islands in the Furneaux Group. It is private property and has been severely affected by grazing livestock, fire, muttonbirding and the introduction of exotic animals. The island is part of the Franklin Sound Islands Important Bird Area, identified as such by BirdLife International because it holds over 1% of the world populations of six bird species.

Flora and fauna

The island’s vegetation is dominated by the grass Poa poiformis, aided by the burrowing and fertilising activities of the shearwaters in conjunction with regular burning-off. However, at the north-eastern side of the island, there is a remnant mixed forest community, rare within the Furneaux Group, of manna gum and Acacia verticillata with various species of Allocasuarina, Melaleuca and Leptospermum.

Recorded breeding seabird and wader species are short-tailed shearwater (about 300,000 pairs), white-faced storm-petrel, sooty oystercatcher and pied oystercatcher. Reptiles present include the metallic skink, spotted skink, eastern three-lined skink, eastern blue-tongued lizard, lowland copperhead and tiger snake. A native mammal recorded from the island is the rakali, along with introduced mice, rats and feral cats.