Abundance, Exploitation, Recovery: A Portrait of South Georgia

Sally Poncet first came to South Georgia in 1977. Back then, she said, the sub-Antarctic island was as gorgeous as it is today: A spine of mountains, some 100 miles long, defines the terrain; glaciers drape down from the peaks, with verdant slopes running up to meet them; glistening beaches wrap around the shoreline. But in those days, Ms. Poncet recalled, the island had an empty feel to it. “You felt a lack,” she explained. “It wasn’t alive like you knew it could be.”

Nobody knows South Georgia the way Ms. Poncet does. An independent field ecologist, she has surveyed or counted everything from its grasses and albatrosses to its elephant seals. Her first son was born on a sailboat here in 1979. Now, at the age of 69, she continues to work in the field — just as she did 45 years ago.

South Georgia is part of a remote British Overseas Territory with no permanent population. It sits on the edge of the Southern Ocean over 900 miles northeast of the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula and almost 900 miles east of the Falkland Islands.

Its history reads like a list of offenses against nature, including commercial sealing, commercial whaling and the introduction of nonnative species, including rats and reindeer.

Now that hunting is history and the invasive mammals have been eradicated, Ms. Poncet and her colleagues are witnessing a remarkable ecological recovery. The scientific literature delivers a muted version of it, but in listening to the scientists — who are driven by data and not prone to hyperbole — their joy and wonder comes tumbling out. Among the terms they used to describe the island’s revival: “miraculous,” “spectacular,” “really emotional,” and “a beacon of hope.”