Diana's Peak National Park

Diana's Peak rises to 823 metres above sea level, making it the highest point on the island, and it is covered by a national park that protects the last remaining patches of the island's original cloud forest. Before the arrival of humans and their introduced animals, the entire island above about 300 metres was cloaked in this forest; today only fragments survive in the peaks and along a few steep valley sides, and these remnants are precious both ecologically and aesthetically. The loss of the original forest is one of the most significant ecological changes in the island's history, comparable to the deforestation of Britain in the Neolithic period.

The most striking feature of the park is the cabbage tree forest, a stand of tall native cabbage trees with distinctive silvery trunks that emerge from a dense undergrowth of ferns, mosses and endemic shrubs. The trees are at their most atmospheric in the early morning when the forest is frequently immersed in cloud, the trunks fading into the mist and the sound of endemic wirebirds calling from the canopy above the fog line. The cabbage tree, formal name Melaleuca howeana, is found nowhere else in the world except on this single island and a closely related species on a single peak in Tasmania.

The Saint Helena wirebird is the island's most celebrated endemic species, a small plover found nowhere else in the world, and its population is largely concentrated in the area around Diana's Peak. The wirebird favours the short turf that is maintained by grazing, and walks through the park in the early morning or late afternoon offer the best chances of sighting it among the tussock grass and low scrub that fringe the tree fern gullies. The bird has been the subject of intense conservation effort and its population, once down to around 150 individuals, has recovered to somewhere between 450 and 550 through habitat management and predator control.

Tree ferns grow in the deeper gullies where moisture collects, their fronds creating a dense canopy that filters the light into a green twilight. These ferns are a remnant of a flora type that once covered much of the island and are now restricted to the wettest and most sheltered locations. Several species of endemic snail are also found in the park, creeping among the leaf litter and on the stems of the ferns. The ferns themselves are a mix of species including the widespread royal fern and the more localised spleenwort, both adapted to the high humidity and frequent cloud that characterise the peaks.

Paths through the park are well-maintained but can be muddy after rain; the circular walk from the car park near the summit to the two peaks and back takes about 90 minutes at a steady pace. From the top of Diana's Peak on a clear day the view extends across the island's interior, taking in the deep valleys radiating outward from the central ridge, the distant Atlantic horizon, and on a very clear day the possible shapes of Ascension Island and the highlands of Tristan da Cunha far to the south. The path is waymarked and a small information board at the car park explains the ecology of the park and the conservation work being done to protect the wirebird.

It protects the last remnants of Saint Helena's original cloud forest and provides habitat for the critically endangered Saint Helena wirebird.

The cabbage tree forest and tree fern gullies create a landscape that is unlike anything else in the South Atlantic and gives a genuine sense of pre-human island ecology.

The panoramic views from the summit on clear days are among the finest in the island chain, extending to Ascension and potentially Tristan da Cunha.