Selvagens Islands (Tentative List)

The Selvagens Islands form a small sub-archipelago of Madeira lost in the Atlantic, midway between the European continent and the Canary Islands. Despite their modest size — barely more than 2.7 km² of emerged land — they constitute one of the best-preserved island ecosystems in the North Atlantic and, for that reason, have featured since 2017 on Portugal’s Tentative List for UNESCO World Heritage, in the natural property category.

A remote archipelago

Situated some 250 km south of Funchal and 165 km north of the Canary Islands, the Selvagens are divided into two main groups separated by around 15 km of open sea: the Selvagem Grande, to the north-east, and the Selvagem Pequena, to the south-west, the latter surrounded by a string of islets and low reefs, such as the Ilhéu de Fora. Extreme isolation and the scarcity of fresh water have kept the archipelago practically uninhabited over the centuries: apart from the reserve wardens and the garrison that maintains the lighthouse, there is no permanent population.

The Portuguese presence dates back to the Age of Discovery — tradition attributes the naming of the islands, in 1438, to the navigator Diogo Gomes de Sintra. For centuries they belonged to private owners, until they were finally acquired by the State in 1971, the year in which they were classified as a nature reserve.

Portugal’s first nature reserve

The Selvagens Islands Nature Reserve, created in 1971 and incorporated into the Madeira Natural Park, was the first protected area of its kind in the country. Its value lies above all in biodiversity: the islands are one of the most important seabird colonies in the North Atlantic, with populations of Cory’s shearwater (Calonectris diomedea), white-faced storm petrel and Madeiran storm petrel, among other species that find a refuge here to nest. The flora includes endemic species found only in the archipelago, adapted to an arid soil and to near-desert conditions of aridity.

The isolation that for centuries made the Selvagens inhospitable to humankind is precisely what makes them today a rare natural laboratory: an Atlantic ecosystem that has largely escaped human pressure.

The marine protected area around the islands has been progressively enlarged, in recognition that the true treasure of the Selvagens does not end on dry land but extends to the surrounding waters, crossed by turtles, cetaceans and a rich pelagic fauna.

The World Heritage candidacy

On 31 January 2017, Portugal submitted the Selvagens Islands to the UNESCO Tentative List, justifying the candidacy with the natural criteria (vii), (viii), (ix) and (x) — natural beauty, geological processes, ecological processes and biodiversity conservation. Inclusion on the Tentative List is the mandatory stage that precedes any formal proposal for inscription on the World Heritage List, functioning as an inventory of the properties that each State considers to be of outstanding universal value.

The candidacy is part of a broader effort to enhance the natural heritage of Madeira, a region that has already seen its Laurisilva Forest recognised as World Heritage and which keeps other proposals on the waiting list, such as the Levadas of Madeira. Taken together, these initiatives reflect a commitment to a narrative in which the heritage value of the archipelago is asserted as much through culture as through nature.

Should it come to fruition, the inscription of the Selvagens would place under UNESCO’s seal one of the last intact sanctuaries of the Atlantic — a recognition that would reward half a century of rigorous conservation begun in 1971.